What if
by GreenEM
Summary: What if Carol had been stronger? What if when the walkers went after Sophia on the highway, she had gone after her? What if Ed had survived the night the quarry was attacked. What if Carol wasn't Ed's wife, but his 18 year old daughter? What if Carol and Daryl had slowly been building a friendship from day one, but had kept it a secret from everyone?
1. Chapter 1 - Carol

**Chapter 1 - Carol**

Carol's eyes rose with the sun. She was curled protectively around her kid sister. She could hear her father's snoring behind and was thankful for what ever time she was given without having to deal with him.

She gently shook Sophia awake.

The little girl opened her eyes with a start but didn't make a peep. I did my best to smile at her as she looked up at me. Little girls should wake up to smiles.

I nodded my head toward the tent door and she nodded. I unzipped the flap as slowly and silently as I could. Stopping every time his snoring halted.

After what seemed like an eternity we grabbed our shoes and stepped outside. I didn't bother zipping the tent back up, we had barely opened it slit and I didn't want to risk waking him.

I shoved my feet into my Doc's and helped Sophia tie her canvas shoes. I was starving but Ed didn't want us eating any of his MREs in front of the others so we wouldn't need to share.

He really got the idea of pulling together, that one.

The camp was silent though, and I was starving. I'm sure Sophia was too but she had learned not to complain a long time ago.

I took her hand and we made our way over to our SUV. Looking around to check no one else was awake I pulled on the handle. Didn't budge.

Damn.

Of course Ed locked the car. No way I would risk waking him up to get the keys. I'd rather risk a mob of geeks.

I turned to walk away and gasped.

"Jesus, you scared the crap out of me," I whispered.

Sophia tugged hard on my arm and glared at me. She didn't like it when I swore.

I rolled my eyes at her and looked up to see the man's back, retreating as silently as he appeared.

I bit my lip, and looked back down at my sister. No one else seemed awake and there was no food or chores yet...

I followed him, pulling Sophie along after me. She was dragging her feet. She didn't like new people. Well, like is the wrong word. People terrified her. Scared me too. We knew what people where capable of...

The man's tent was set up on the edge of camp. He was starting a little fire when we got there, no matches, boy scout style.

I smiled, he didn't look like much of a boy scout. Filthy, bloody pants, muddy boots, greasy hair and a sweat stained formerly white shirt with cut off sleeves. He had a handsome face though.

I stood at the edge of his little camp not sure what to do. His back was turned and so there was still time to walk away and pretend like this never happened.

"Can I help you with somethin'?" He said without turning around.

How did he know we were here?

"Um," I said, biting my lip. "Actually we were wondering if there was anything you needed help with," I said cringing at how stupid I sounded.

The man looked us up and down over his shoulder and snorted as he turned back to his work.

"Look your obviously real capable, and maybe you don't NEED help, but that don't mean it wouldn't lighten your load. Plus we got nothin' else to do and no where to do it 'til rest'a camp wakes up. "

He didn't say anything thing.

"Come on Sophie," I said pulling her away, not sure why I had bothered. I never reach out. It's always better for Sophie and I to keep to ourselves.

"You know how to skin an animal?" He asked.

Sophie looked up at me with a grimace but I gave her a glare to be cool. That skill could come in handy.

"Ain't nothin' I can't learn, and then next time you WILL have someone who knows how, who can help you." I pulled Sophie back over to the man's fire and knelt down next to the man.

He pulled a Rambo sized knife from his belt and pointed it at me and then Sophie, "either of you wake my brother up from his hangover you'll be in a world of hurt, got me?"

I nodded my head and squeezed Sophie's hand as she leaned into me trembling a little.

"It's o.k., Sophie's real good at keeping out of the way," I smiled down at her. She nodded back at me and I pulled her favorite book of fairy tales out of my pack and handed it to her. She took it and moved over to the other side of the fire and tried her best to ignore what we were about to do.

"Roll your sleeves up," he said without looking at me as he dropped a pile of squirrels in front of the two of us.

I swallowed hard and pulled my sleeves down further. It was summer in Georgia and hotter'n hell but there wasn't a prize in the world that could tempt me to reveal my arms right now.

He looked at me like I was stupid. "Look you don't know what your doing, it's gonna be messy and you'll get blood all over yourself."

I pursed my lips together and nodded my head. "It's o.k. I'll do a wash later. I can do your wash too if you want, in exchange for teachin' me."

He just frowned at me. "I can do my own damn washin' woman, now watch real close to what I do."

I didn't take my eyes away and when he was done he had a perfectly skinned squirrel. He stuck it on a spit and put it over the fire.

"Hey you, little girl."

Sophie looked up from her book and blanched.

"Make yourself useful and turn this spit while I watch your mother butcher a perfectly good squirrel."

Sophie just looked at me.

I smiled at her and waved her over.

"It's O.K. Soph."

She put her book down hesitantly and crawled over to the spit. She took the end from the man and stared turning the creature just as he had been doing. He watched her for a moment, assumably to make sure she didn't fuck it up before nodding and turning his attention back to me.

Handing me the handle of his hunting knife he raised his eye brows as if in challenge. Did he think I would chicken out?

I took the damn knife from his damn hand and stared working on the animal.

He would tisk every now and then to let me know that I was doing something wrong but other than that he was silent. I took that as a good sign.

When I was done I held up my finished product. It wasn't as neat and tidy at his, but it was still recognizable as a squirrel.

He nodded to a pile'a sticks he had at the ready as spits and I did my best to skewer it as he had done.

Nodding his head again, he said, "you know how to pay attention, learn, that's rare."

I gave him a tight smile before looking back at my knees. He got up and dug around in a pack before pulling out a second hunting knife and came back kneel next to me. He handed me another squirrel and took one for himself. We finished the rest of the squirrels in silence. He made quick work of his, finishing six in the time if took me to get just two more done.

"You got the basics down, the rest will come with practice," he said handing me one of the grilled squirrels.

I was so hungry and surprised by the sort of complement that I smiled at him, a real smile.

"Thanks," I said. "Maybe next time you go hunting I can help you again."

Why did I just say that? Why am I pushing my luck.

"We'll see," he said eyeing me as he took a bite of his own squirrel shish kabob.

I motioned Sophia over to me and handed her my squirrel. The man had given her one of her own, but who knew when our next meal would be. Children shouldn't have to go hungry.

"You wanna learn to skin 'em but your too good to eat 'em?" He sneered.

I looked up in shock. "Just tryin' to look after my kid sister," I said defensively. "I'm not like you, I don't know how to hunt, so who knows when the next time I can get her something to eat will be."

I bit down on my words.

He looked at me for a long time. "You both helped prepare them, fairs fair. You can each have two," he said handing me another squirrel with a pointed look that said, 'and you better eat this one.'

I took it with a tight smile and a thanks.

"'Sides, I don't much see the point in starvin' yourself, who will look after her when your too weak to?"

I just nodded my head and took a bite. God I must have been starving 'cause those squirrels tasted like heaven.

When we finished our meals the man showed me how to burry the carcasses so they didn't attract any scavengers and how to clean my blade and sharpen it with soap stone before putting it back in its sheath.

The camp had slowly been coming to life as we had worked and ate but everyone gave the man's tent a wide birth, I noticed.

Just then I heard Ed shouting for us and Sophia gasped and ran over to hold my hand.

I looked around in panic to make sure we weren't in his line of sight.

"Please don't mention to my Pa we was talkin' to you," I asked with a pleading look before hurrying off in the direction of Ed's voice, dragging Sophia behind me.

"It was a good morning, huh Sophia?" I said.

"I think we had a good couple of hours without daddy," she whispered.

I smiled at her. "Lets not tell him that." I said with a wink. "We only just got up, I had to go pee and I thought he needed his sleep so I dragged you with me so I wasn't in the woods alone, kay?"

She pursed her lips and nodded firmly, knowing I would do all the talking anyway.


	2. Chapter 2 - Carol

I own nothing...

**Chapter two - Carol**

I never liked people much. They're shallow, self centered and judgmental. Never had much use for them any more then they had any use for me.

But, as flawed as they are, they are still people, and I still couldn't stop the horror that waited for me every time I closed my eyes. Before we made it to the safety of the quarry the things I had seen... people ripped limb from limb, still conscious, screaming.

They haunted me, kept me awake at night, made me sick, sad and angry.

I took a breath and bent down to pick up a mushroom and drop it in my bucket.

Ed had been complaining about how hungry he was and how terrible a daughter I was for not looking after his needs.

The timing couldn't have been better for King Shane to mention that wild mushrooms grew in the area and they could use a volunteer.

This way I could have hours away from Ed, away from everyone and make it look like I was just trying to "look after his needs."

I needed some time alone and at the moment Sophie was in "school" with Carl and Head Mistress Lori, so at least I didn't have to worry about her getting caught alone by Ed or geeks.

Did I really just list them in that order?

God I come from a fucked up family.

Suddenly I heard a snapping branch and the telltale moan. Before I could turn around I felt hands around my shoulders. I closed my eyes to brace against the pain.

It never came. There was a whooshing of air and the hands slipped from my shoulders before something thudded against the ground behind me.

Opening my eyes I spun around and saw a geek crumpled at my feet with an arrow in its eye. I screamed and started backing up but bumped into something hard. I spun around again with a battle cry and raised the bucket over my head, prepared to strike, but a hand caught my wrist while it was still over my head.

"Some way to show your gratitude."

It was the man, the man who showed me how to skin squirrels. He had gone on a hunting trip when his brother had volunteered to go into Atlanta.

He released my wrist and I let it drop limply to my side.

He grabbed my chin gently and pushed it from left to right, examining my neck.

I must have been in shock, because I let him.

"You bit?"

My eyes which had drifted to some distant point in a daze shot up to meet his. I shook my head no, the terrifying reality of what just happened, what could have happened hit me.

I shook my head more firmly, "No."

He nodded and brushed passed me, pulling his bolt our of the geek's eye.

"What are you doing out here?" He asked looking at my bucket.

"King Shane asked for volunteers to go looking for wild mushrooms," my eyes bulged and I covered my mouth with my hands. Did I just say King Shane out loud?

The man smirked a little, "more like King Idiot, asking an unarmed girl to go out into the woods alone."

"Your out here alone," I said, not thinking.

"I'm neither unarmed or fool enough to let a moaning, stumbling, lame brained geek sneak up on me," he shot back, looking at me like I was slow.

I deserved that.

With a huff he headed back in the direction he had come. I watched him go, still not totally recovered from the shock of it all.

After a few paces he turned around, "Well come on," he said.

I looked at him surprised.

"What? You think I'm gonna leave an unarmed girl who clearly can't take care of herself alone in the damn woods? I've been tracking a buck all day so we're not headed directly back to camp. I'll be damnmed if I let a whole days work go to waste because of some fool girl."

I hurried over to him, head down and tried to keep pace with him as he stocked off.

"You better be silent as the grave little girl, if you scare off my dear..." He let the threat hang. "And you best believe King Shane and I will be having a chat when I get back to camp."

I stopped dead in my tracks.

"Oh god no, please don't. If my father finds out that I met you in the woods he wont hear anything else. Please don't tell? I'm sorry I got into trouble I won't let it happen again, I'll be more careful, promise, just please don't tell anyone?"

He gave me a long look, "Alright."

"Oh thank you, thank you so much."

He looked at me again and I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes.

"You don't thank me for saving your life, but you thank me twice for not telling your daddy on you?"

Maybe my life ain't worth much... Maybe there are things worse then death.

"What's your name?"

He looked at me a little shocked.

"I owe you my life, I should know who owns that debt," I said.

"Daryl Dixon," he said with furrowed brows.

"Carol Peletier." I said, sticking my hand out.

He took it wearily and I gave it a firm shake.

We started walking again in silence.

"Did you know that the ancient Chinese believed that if you save someone's life you were then responsible for them?"

He gave me a side long glance. "I'm not ancient or a Chinc and you are not my problem."

"I know," I said. "I just read a lot, or I used to, sometimes all the facts in my head come spewing out at people. Sorry."

He didn't answer.

"Hey Daryl?"

"What?"

"Thanks for saving my life."

He stopped walking and looked at me for a moment. Then, as if coming to some decision, he said, "Your welcome."


	3. Chapter 3 - Daryl

Itsi3, Lilly72 and Mellissa - Thanks for the love.

Lilly72 - Yes, Daryl will find out, but try to be patient with him and his reaction. He's a badass not a saint. ;)

melissa - Yes, Daryl is younger than in the show but older than Carol is in this story. I'll get into the details later but for now I hope you like this latest update!

I own nothing.

**Chapter 3 - Daryl**

We had been walking for the better part of an hour trackin' this damn dear that just wont quit. I put a bolt in its hind quarter near three hours since but it was a fighter. Had to respect it for that. But it was limping and slowing down. The longer I tracked it the fresher the tracks got.

I had to hand it to the girl. She was quiet. Must come from tip towing around her old man.

You wouldn't think it lookin at her.

Black skin tight jeans, black long sleeved shirt, spiked belt, spiked bracelet, spiked hair. Everything about her screamed loud, but she wasn't.

The tracks turned a hard right, back toward camp. Well, that was fortuitous.

"Why did we turn?" she, Carol, asked softly.

"Ain't chu listen? We're tracking a dear."

"I don't see anything," her eyebrows furrowed.

"That's cause you ain't no tracker."

The girl bit her lip and blinked twice, just like she did before asking me to teach her to skin a squirrel.

"Suppose you wanna lear how to track too?"

Her mouth dropped open in surprise.

"Well if another person knew how-"

"Yeah, yeah I know there'd be another person to help lighten the load, right?"

"This world isn't what it was, the things you need to know, they've changed. Most of the people back at camp, all the skills they spent a lifetime learning don't mean squat anymore. But you, your the most valuable person in this camp, you have the skills to survive in this world.

"I'd do anythin'. I promise, I wont be a burden and I know you have no reason to help me but... it's just that I have my sister to look out for and I've already let her down in so many other ways, please I can't watch her starve."

"Ain't no one gonna starve. You think I'd take down a buck, eat my fill, and watch the carcass go bad rather than share? Can't eat the whole thing on my own."

The girl just looked at me.

"Besides, can't see why you're so sure the world has changed. Isn't everyone else back at camp waiting for the calvary to charge in and rescue them."

She just kept lookin at me with those big blue eyes, not sayin a word. Damnmit what did I care, she wasn't no kin to me. None of em, the could all die and it wouldn't much matter to me either way.

Couldn't hurt though, could it. Just wouldn't tell Merle.

"All right, look, see here," I said getting down on my haunches to point the tracks out, surprising myself. Should let the girl figure it out on her own, just like I had to.

Couple hours later, we were just outside the camp with a dead dear at our feet.

The girl was a quick study and she was smiling up at me with what we had accomplished.

"You ready to learn how to skin a dear," I asked.

She smiled wider and nodded emphatically.

Strange girl.

"Here?"

"Here." I said handing her the hunting knife from my belt. She nodded and took the knife, kneeling by the dear.

I talked her through it and she did great.

I kept expecting her to gag or faint or something girls would do but she was focused, determined.

We buried what we couldn't use and wrapped the rest up.

"All right, lets bring our prize back to camp," I said.

She looked up in terror.

"No! You promised. You said you wouldn't tell anyone you met me in the woods."

I just looked at her in a state of disbelief. We'd been tracking the dear for hours. It was close to sundown. Did she really think they would believe she was looking for mushrooms that long.

"Oh, shit, I haven't been looking for mushrooms. I don't have a single one. He's gonna-"

She stopped abruptly, biting down on her lip.

Who's gonna what? I almost asked, but she wasn't my problem.

"I have to go. I'm gonna go walk around, come in from another side of camp as you."

I watched her go off. I almost insisted that she go straight into camp and I'd walk around, but she wasn't my problem.

I got back to my tent and started my fire. I tried not to keep and eye out for her comin back but I couldn't help it.

I saw her approach the main camp quietly, head down. None of the bold forwardness she always seemed to have for me.

She came up to that skinny one, that was connected some how with King Shane, as Carol called him.

He scoffed to himself at that. At least he wasn't the only one who thought that cop was an arrogant, pretentious ass.

"Any luck," the skinny one asked, her voice carrying on the wind.

Carol shook her head.

"Well, let me see if I can try my luck," she said, grabbing the bucket.

"It's almost sun down," I heard Carol say.

"I guess l'll just take care not to be away quite as long as you," she said brushing past her.

Bitch.

Carol's shoulders slouched.

"Where's Sophia?" Carol called after Skeletor.

"With your father," she called back.

That's when I saw it. The terror on her face. I saw her almost get eaten alive and the only look on her face was resignation. Bracing for the pain that would come, but not afraid of it. She hears her little sister is with her father and she's terrified. She runs over to the tent and unzips it.

I guess they weren't there cause her head pops back up again and she looks around wildly.

She runs over to the old coot that keeps a post on his RV and shouts something to him I can't hear. He points into the woods and she runs in that direction.

I debate going after them, but she is not my problem.

I start roasting the venison instead.

A little while later I see the little girl, Sophia, Carol had called her, running like mad, crying I think. She practically dove into her tent and zipped the flap shut.

I looked around. I wasn't the only one who noticed.

Practically everyone in camp saw and I was by far the least qualified to handle a crying little girl. I kept to the task at hand but noticed Skeletor was still gone and King Shane who was always happy to rub his nose in everyone's business was no where to be seen.

I saw the two blonds and the old man talking worriedly, looking in the direction of the little girl's tent.

Finally the blonds walked over to the tent and knelt beside it, I could see they were talking to the little girl, maybe trying to coax her to come out or tell them what happened.

After a quarter of an hour Carol's pa came strolling out of the woods, a smug look on his face.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, git the hell 'way from ma tent," he said kicking dirt at them like he was shewing stray dogs.

"Sophia's been in there sobbing," said the older blonde. "She came running out of the woods, we were worried she saw a walker.

"Or worse," piped in her sister.

"My family ain't none of your concern. Now git!"

The blondes backed off slowly, throwing him dirty looks over their shoulders as they made their way back to the RV. That's when the younger blonde gasped and pointed.

I followed her gaze to see little Carol near stumble out of the woods. She was holding her self real stiff but looked wobbly on her feet, like she was trying hard not to limp. Her hands were clenched by her sides so tight, her knuckles were white. Her eyes stared straight ahead but didn't seem to see nothin'.

She walked straight passed the blondes like she didn't notice them, even though I could see they were asking her something. She walked straight up to her tent. Her father was still standing at the entrance and as she ducked down to enter he grabbed the back of her neck and shoved her in.

I almost jumped up, but she wasn't my problem.

Ed ducked in after them and I went back to my venison. When it was finished I kept as much as I thought Merle and I could finish before it turned and brought the rest to the main camp. Everyone suddenly got real friendly with the redneck then. Like I gave a fuck about their gratitude. It was disrespectful to let good meat go to waste, an animal lost it's life over it, the least we could do was make sure it didn't die for nothing.

I went back to my own fire and watched the Peletier tent. I watched as Carol's pa got out. Eat the meat that his daughter helped make possible and then take two more shares, supposedly for Carol and Sophia. I snorted, no fucking way he was sharing. They were too skinny and he was way too chubby for that to be the case.

I gritted my teeth and climbed into my own tent. I stared up at the ceiling wide awake.

She wasn't my problem.


	4. Chapter 4 - Daryl

Dakari Wolfe, itsi3, hillaryn and LampPostInWinter - Thanks for the love!

Tigerlilly - I would tend to agree with that assessment, but he'll have to be dragged kicking and screaming the all the way. )

**__**I don't own a thing.

**Chapter 4 - Daryl**

Shots and screams pierce the night.

My brother was gone, I had been hustling on foot for hours to get back to camp once we discovered the box truck was gone, and my only thought when I heard the chaos up ahead was of Carol and Sophia.

My head filled with the image of those two little girls torn open and writhing in pain.

I tried to shake it off, tried to think of, Carol, coming up to my tent as I stormed around my camp getting my stuff in order so I could go to the city and rescue my stupid fucking brother who couldn't stay sober long enough to **not** get his ass handcuffed to a roof.

She was scared, not of me though, not of my anger. She was ducking low and looking over her shoulder. She knelt by the dead ashes of my fire and just watched me in silence. She seemed to play with her spiked bracelet nervously without knowing it. I stopped my pacing and just looked at her.

"What the fuck do you want?"

She flinched a little but didn't skulk off like I thought she would. What did she think I wanted her stupid ass hangin' around me for? She was weak and a coward. Didn't know nothin useful I didn't teach her myself, and the things she let her daddy do to her and probably her little sister... She was no use to me.

"I wont do you the disservice of sayin' I know how you feel," she said peaking up at me before retuning her eyes to the cooling ashes, "but my sister is all I got in this world."

She scoffed bitterly.

"Rest'a camp don't care if I live or die, civilized as they like to think they are, my life don't mean nothin to them. Even if they did keep me around, keep me alive, I wouldn't have no reason to keep fightin if she was gone. Fight despair, fight hunger, fight geeks... my father..."

Catching herself she was quiet.

I just stared at her. What did she want from me? I didn't have time for the trials and tribulations of little girls.

"Carol!"

She looked around wildly in panic.

"Carol, where are you, you stupid whore? You got chores to do."

She took a breath to steady herself and looked me straight in the eye.

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for what happened to your brother and I hope that you find him and..."

She seemed lost for words.

"I just hope that you find him."

With that she gave me that tight smile of her's and turned away.

"Hey girl," I said before I could stop myself.

She turned, a blank expression on her face.

I dug through one of my bags and handed her a folding knife with a five inch blade. It would be small enough to hind in her pocket but all she would have to do was-

"Go for the eye," I said and she looked at me as she held out her hand. "Blade's long enough to pierce the brain through the eye. That way your lack of strength and the thinness of the blade wont be a problem. Plus, if you don't try to stick it through the skull then there's no chance that the blade could get stuck."

She smiled at me, a real smile.

"Seems I learn somethin' from you every time we meet."

I just nodded, frowning.

Her father bellowed her name again. She nodded and was off, but not before whispering, "thank you Daryl. Good luck."

I watched her go, creeping silently through a maze of tents.

Before I could stop myself, the hope that she use that blade on her daddy crept into my mind.

I shook the thought away.

_She is not my problem._

Another scream ripped the memory from my mind.

My feet took off without my bidding and my body found strength that wasn't there before.

I didn't bother telling myself they weren't my problem. I didn't tell my self anything, when we broke through the trees into the camp all thought stopped. There was blood and death and instincts took over.

Geek, fire. Geek, fire. Geek ripping open a woman's neck, fire twice.

King Shane had Skeletor and the boy behind his back with a few other survivors using the RV to protect their rear. Smart.

Rick broke away from the T-dog, Glenn and me.

"Baby! Carl!"

I realized he had been shouting it all along but with the adrenaline pumping in my ears I hadn't noticed.

Rick dropped to his knees as his boy and Skelator ran to him. I scanned the survivors. I saw that black woman, the mexicans, the old man, Carol's Pa but no Carol or Sophia. I looked around at the bodies but I didn't see them. I scanned the camp again and a pair of white arms lifted Sophia up to stand on the roof of a car.

I ran for them weaving through the tents that blocked my view. Carol came into view, her back to her Pa's SUV, my knife in her hand raised over her head, three Geeks coming at her. She stabbed one in the eye and pushed it hard with her other hand knocking the next one over. I raised my cross bow to shoot the third but she was already there, stabbing it in the eye. She walked back to the second geek, still struggling with the now truly dead weight pinning it down and she dispatched it from it's wretched existence.

She stood, took a shuddering breath and then began to cry.

I was proud of her. She stayed calm, kept herself together and protected her sister 'til it was over.

She ran to the S.U.V., folding the knife and tucking it back into her pocket.

"Sophie," she said raising her arms. The girl was crying too and reached for her sister. Neither saw the geek come around the side of the car.

I raised my bow and pulled the trigger. They both jumped when the geek's body hit the ground.

I stalked over and put my boot on the geek's face as I pulled my bolt out.

"Next thing you need to learn is to be aware of your damn surroundings," I said pointing my bolt at her.

She nodded and headed back to the main camp.

She turned, Sophia in her arms. "Thank you Daryl," she whispered.

I watched her go and waited 'til she was back in with the overs before I walked the perimeter of camp looking for any other stragglers. I told myself that I was doing it since no one else would think to, but in truth I knew I was trying to protect Carol from what her Pa would do if he saw her return to camp with me.

How the fuck did I let that girl become my problem?


	5. Chapter 5 - Carol

Guest, DarkAngelShadow, Tigerlilly, Jasmine Jade, and itsi3 thanks for the love!

Watch out children! M for adult muthafuckin' themes.

I don't own shit...

**Chapter 5 - Carol**

Books.

Many times many books. Trashy books. Classic books. Biographies, essays, poetry, science fiction. I ran my hand along each spine with love, reading their titles and pulling the ones I was interested in. I had a backpack near filled up when I heard the door close.

I turned and swallowed hard.

"Pa?" I asked. He had been as much an evil bastard as ever at camp but at least he had been sober, controlled, careful, in a manner of speaking.

"Be a good little girl and come to daddy," he said with that mad look he got when he drank.

I tried to steady my breathing and ready myself for the pain.

He took another swig from a bottle of caramel colored liquor and slammed it down. I didn't flinch. He got off on fear and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"Honor thy mother and thy father," he slurred, grabbing my chin ruffly. "It's in the bible."

I held my tongue and just looked at him. Didn't matter what I said, wouldn't change the way this was going to end. All that mattered was that if it was me, then it wasn't Sophie.

"You are a very disobedient daughter," he said he turned away a little and then snapped around, back handing me.

I saw it coming, he loved the old pretend to leave and then wham trick. Knowing it was coming didn't stop my vision from going black or the bruises I'd have tomorrow from my body hitting the floor.

I heard him unbuckling his belt. I didn't move.

I closed my eyes as he ripped my pants off. Everything else I could take, the beatings, the insults, but this was too much. I felt my mind shutting down. I clenched my fists tightly enough to draw blood waiting to find out if he would beat me with his belt before he... before he...

My mouth dropped open in a silent scream as the leather tore open old wounds on my back.

If it's me, it's not Sophie. If it's me, it's not Sophie. If it's me, it's not Sophie. If it's me, it's not Sophie.

I repeated it over and over in my mind. It was the only thing I had. The only grip I had on sanity. The only thing that would stop me from killing myself after it was all over.

"Why do you make me do this," he said. I heard his zipper being pulled down. "If you were a good girl, I wouldn't have to do this."

A single tear rolled down my cheek, the one pushed into the floor. He will never see me cry.


	6. Chapter 6 - Daryl

**itsis3 - thanks for the love. Yes they are at the CDC, hopefully this next chapter will make that more clear...**

**That last chapter was so short I figured I'd throw two up. Hope ya'all like it. **

**I don't own a thing.**

**Chapter 6 - Daryl**

I waited for Carol to come to breakfast, my eyes darting without my say-so to breakroom's entrance, but she never showed.

Everyone else was assembled. Ed was stuffing his pig face. Sophia looked pale and was just staring at her food. T-dog had gone all Martha Stuart, bragging about his damn powdered eggs. King Shane was trying real hard to catch Skeletor's eye and send her meaningful looks which she did not seem open to. Interesting. Glen looked more Geek than alive, last night was probably the first time the kid ever got drunk. The black lady was doting over Glenn's hung over ass. Carl was getting a few laughs at Rick's expense as he fumbled with the aspirin. Bunch of fucking amateurs. I drank as much any of them and I wasn't moaning like a little bitch. Finally, Doc Jenner showed and the old man, Dale, and the blonde started pestering 'im about the meaning of life, zombie apocalypse style.

I shoveled the rest of my plate into mouth and shoved away from the table.

I told myself I was just scoping the place out but I was systematically searching the rooms and I knew who I was looking for, I just didn't know why.

I poked my head into the rec room and didn't see anyone so I kept going but then I stopped, backed up a few paces and slowly pushed the door open.

There was an empty bottle of liquor on a coffee table. Same bottle I saw in Ed's hand last night.

I stepped into the room and noticed Carol's bag knocked over with books tumbling out. Girl loved to read.

I took a breath and walked around the couch to find Carol curled in a tight ball on the floor, her eyes wide open staring straight ahead. I dropped to my haunches by her head.

"Breakfast is ready," I said.

"Not too hungry."

"Maybe not, but Sophia hasn't touched her breakfast," I murmured, not sure what else to say. "I reckon she's worried bout ya, don't feel right eatin' without ya."

She sighed. Girl had told me once that Sophia was her only reason to keep on. Guess she meant it, 'cause she was pushing herself off the floor.

I heard her suck her breath in through her teeth as she struggle to get up.

I stood and held out my hand to her.

She looked at it and then down at the floor.

"I couldn't make myself get off the floor this time. Couldn't deal with everyone lookin' at me."

I kept my hand extended and finally she took it. I pulled her up and she sucked in her breath hard.

She swayed on her feet and I kept hold of her while she steadied herself.

Put my hand under her chin without actually touching her and with visible reluctance she looked up. Now it was my turn to suck in my breath.

My hand was shaking with rage as I lowered it to my side but I kept my face studiously blank. I knew what she was talking about. Nothing was as bad as the beating but the pity in peoples eyes was a close second.

"Come on woman, before there ain't nothin left," I said.

She nodded and looked at her book bag.

"I see you're looking to pursue a career in petty theft," I jabbed, walking over and slinging the bag over my shoulder. That got a weak laugh out of her. "Don't worry, I got your loot."

I followed behind her, watching her try to hide her injuries. She was walking stiffly, trying not to move her back at all, but she was also walking awkwardly like she was tender down between her...

_Son of a bitch!_

I stopped and stared at her back as she hobbled forward. I was mad, mad at her mad at him, mad at the world for making sick men and weak women.

"What are you gonna tell everyone about your face?" I spat, the anger too much for me.

She stopped with a sigh.

"I got too drunk last night, tripped on Sophie's doll and broke my fall with my face. I'm just a stupid clumsy girl."

"What are you gonna tell them about your back?"

Her body went ridged.

"What about my back?"

"What about your back? What about your back!?"

I closed the distance between us in two strides, grabbed her shoulders and pressed hard. She gasped and withered away from my touch before she whirled around to face me. I kept stalking toward her and she kept backing up, 'til she was pressed against the wall, fear in her eyes. I was too mad to care.

I slammed my hands on either side of her head. "What are you gonna tell them about..."

I couldn't say it so I just looked down.

Tears welled in her eyes.

"Please, please stop."

"You're pathetic," I spat. "How could you let him do THAT to you?"

A little sob escaped her lips and she slid down the wall. I backed up and started pacing like mad in front of her. Tears streamed down her face silently as she looked passed me, passed the wall, passed this whole place, somewhere beyond reach.

"Before the world went to shit, you don't think I wanted to run away? But what was I gonna do? Leave Sophie? He started on me when I was younger than she is now. If it's me, then it's not her," she said firmly, desperately. "I couldn't take her with me. I was a minor. Maybe I could have kept myself fed and alive and avoided child services dragging me back to him if I was on my own, but..."

I kept silent, pacing, watching her. I'm not sure if she was even aware I was their or that she was speaking aloud.

"It's not like I'm her mother, I couldn't sue for custody, so I stayed because I couldn't take her and I couldn't leave her. I couldn't fight because she can't. If I did, he would just go after her, easier prey. Too weak to fight back, too weak to get away."

I stopped pacing when I realized what she was saying. What she sacrificed for her sister. How trapped she was by the situation.

"My only option was to never give him a reason to go after her. She's 11, I just had to survive seven more years and then we could both leave. I could make sure she made a life for herself as far away from him as the world would allow. After that, after she was safe and o.k., I was thinking I could kill myself. Maybe him too."

I leaned back against the wall across from her and let my body slide down to the floor.

"Then the world went to hell. There will never be some safe, far away place I can set her up in. We can't hunt or forage or farm. We have no medical training or any useful skills. Our best chance of survival is to stay with this group. So now, after we can finally run away without worrying about being dragged back, we can't. Why? Because if we leave the group, we will be eaten alive by geeks."

I hung my head in shame. Of everyone here I should have understood.

"That's how."

"Huh," I said, looking up.

She turned her head to look at me.

"Knowing the alternative, that's how I let him do THAT to me."

"You don't have to stay livin' with this to stay with the group, just-"

"Just what?" she spat. "Just tell them? You think I want them knowing. You think I want you knowing? If it was you, would tell everyone?"

I just shook my head and looked down, overwhelmed with shame.

"You could kill him," I whispered.

She looked up at me then, but said nothing.

_I could kill him._


	7. Chapter 7 - Carol

CaineSpeedle, LaurenEmilyxx, crazstiz, Tigerlilly, Jasmin Jade, crystal, DarkAngelShadow, HarmioneandMarcus, itsi3 and Summers Rage - thanks for the love!

Summers Rage - I appreciate the constructive criticism and I get where you are coming from. The lack of both emotion and detail were intentional choices for the authenticity of the characters and respect for the sensitive nature of the subject matter, respectively. I do, however, promise to review Chapter 5 when I have more distance from it. Thanks again! I'm all about becoming the best writer I can be and no one can do that without feedback.

**Chapter 7 - Carol**

"Quit shoveling your face you cow and make yourself useful," snapped Ed, snatching the sparse plate of food away from me and shoving what little there was in his pig mouth.

I got up, still not healed from what happened at the CDC. We were hold up in the second story of a nursing home that had been attacked, by the living. I tried not to think of the murdered people down stares. A world full of geeks and people were still murdering each other. Insane.

"Ed," said Shane, leaning against a wall as he sharpened his knife. "Remind me again why we keep you around?"

"Fuck you cop."

Everyone was staring at Shane. He was generally not one to contain his anger.

"Cause it seems to me you aren't a whole lot of useful yourself," he said. "You don't hunt, you don't scavenge, you don't cook, clean, or protect this group" he said drawing his blade against the sandstone as if to punctuate each statement.

"Seems to me you're what I like to call dead weight."

Shane stopped sharpening his blade just then and looked Ed right in the eye. "So why don't we just drop the weight and MAKE you dead."

This was bad.

I chanced a look at Daryl while everyone was focused on Shane and Ed.

He was glaring at Shane but his eyes flicked to me just for a second and he gave me an infinitesimal nod. No one else noticed so I returned the gesture and he returned his attention to the pissing contest.

"Seems to me it's time me and mine left this crazy ass group," said Ed with a smug look on his face. "You've all just lead us from one death trap to another."

I saw Daryl shift at that but I shook my head slightly, without looking at him and just hoped he caught it.

Daryl, against all odds had become my friend, but he was my secret friend, I wasn't ready for us to tip that hand yet.

"Oh, yeah Ed, you think you would last one minute out there on your own, go ahea-"

"That's enough," came Rick's stern voice.

The room went silent and I was surprised that after his colossally bad call to go to the CDC, we all still looked to him. There was never a vote or a consensus, we've never even official said he was the leader, and yet there it was.

"We are in the middle of Atlanta. We get out of here alive, then we can start making decisions, but let me remind you that safety in numbers is our best shot, especially after what we discovered here today."

He looked each of us square in the eye before continuing.

"It's not just geeks we have to worry about any more."

"It never was."

Every head in the room snapped up.

It was Daryl, and after his observation earlier, it seemed they all put stock in his opinion like they never did before.

Everyone else, even the cops, looked at the carnage downstairs and assumed they got over run by geeks. Daryl read the scene like a book, he was the only one who realized that those poor people all took a bullet in the head, execution style, and they were human when they were shot. The butchers took what ever supplies they wanted and were gone by the time the geeks, hearing the shots like a dinner bell, descended on the place for a feast.

"It was always people you had to worry about. It's people who do fucked up things to one another, alway have. Geeks are just a new obstacle in life, a force of nature, like a flood."

With that, all conversation stopped until watch duties were doled out. Then, everyone went to bed without another word.

Well, not everyone.

Once we were alone, Ed had a few things to say.

"Bet you thought that was funny, huh?" he asked pushing me against the wall, hard. My shoulder blades would be bruised tomorrow, I noted absently. It was strange how detached I could become to what was happening to my own body.

"Why's that cop take such an interest in you anyway?"

I didn't answer. I knew where this was going.

"Did you suck is dick you fucking slut?"

He pushed me again, this time much harder. I heard my head crack against the wall and I stumbled a little as my vision blurred.

"Hey, you look at me when I'm talked to you."

Ed grabbed my jaw to pull my face in his direction before back handing me so hard my body spun as it headed for the floor.

"Get up!"

He huffed before kicking me in the stomach.

"What? You too tired from getting fucked up the ass by that nosey cop?"

He drew his foot back to kick me again but suddenly his body crumbled to the floor next to mine.

I tried to look up but my head was spinning and I closed my eyes against the nausea.

"Come on girl, stay with me."

Daryl.

I felt hands wrap around my shoulders and lift my upper body off the ground. I felt his hands on my head and ribs but I didn't fight it. Couldn't if I wanted to.

"I ain't no doc, but I know a concussion when I see one. You just won yourself the privilege of staying up on watch with me."

I felt his other arm slip under my knees as he lifted me completely off the ground.

"Sophia," I whispered.

"Don'chu worry, I got you both."

I kept my eyes closed tight to try and stop the world from spinning and the nausea that came with it but I chanced a peek when I felt Daryl placing me down gently. He propped my back up against the wall and put a revolver in my hand. Putting his finger to his lips, he made sure he had my attention before turning and pointing over his right shoulder.

With some effort I focused on his finger and then passed it, realizing I was at the top of the staircase where they had set up watch.

He looked back at me and I nodded.

Then he disappeared back to where the rest of the group was sleeping and I did my best to keep my eyes open and on the stairs.

I wouldn't be much use if we were attacked, not with the way my head was whirling. Didn't end up mattering much though, 'cause Daryl was back almost as soon as he had gone, carrying Sophia wrapped up in a blanket.

I almost cried. Even though I saw Ed go down and she was safe with the others before he pulled me away, I was still never easy with her out of my sight. He would wake up in a rage and I couldn't let him catch her alone.

He placed her down so her head was in my lap. I noticed he had another blanket and he draped it over me, avoiding Sophia's head. Then, he took the gun back and retreated to the over side of the hallway.

"Thank you," I heard my voice rasp out.

He just looked at me and took a swig of a caramel colored fluid from a water bottle.

"I know you were trying to help but...when he wakes up... he's gonna unleash holy hell on me."

"You see any doctors around lately?" he asked. I looked at him confused. "Ambulances, hospitals, 911 first responders, red cross volunteers?"

He had worked himself up into an anger and I had learned that anger was the only upset he knew how to be.

"Oh right, the world ended and there isn't any. Injuries that used to be a trip to the hospital now mean death. Ain't no surgery, no one's gonna patch you up and re-set your bones. The way your lovin' Pa was kicking you he coulda broke a rib or caused internal bleeding. Even if a broken rip didn't puncture a lung so's you suffocated to death on dry land, the injury could slow you down enough to get caught by a geek. In this world you have to be on top of your game every second of every day or you die. So do the math, not only do you risk dying every time you take a beating, but the injuries you sustain could get you killed. How you gonna help your sister when you're dead?"

He spat on the floor and took a swig from his water bottle.

He took a breath to calm himself down.

"And maybe not," he said looking at me from the corner of his eye.

"Hmn?"

"You said he'll unleash holy hell on you when he wakes up," Daryl said studying the bottle in his hands. "King Shane gave me a bottle of whiskey for saving his life today. I sprinkled some on Ed so he'll reek of whiskey and put the empty bottle in his hand. With any luck I hit him hard enough that he won't remember what happened before he passed out and he'll attribute his massive head ache a hangover."

"That's a waste of good whiskey," I said, at a loss for what else to say over the lengths he had gone through to protect me from the consequences of helping me.

"Oh, hell no!" he said pulling two more water bottles of amber liquid out of his pockets. "Merle instilled in me the importance of never to wasting good whiskey."

I stared at him for a moment and then laughed. It felt good to laugh, even if it made ribs catch fire.

He kept me awake all through his shift, convinced I had a concussion and then a half hour before his watch was over, he carried first Sophia and then myself to where the others were sleeping.

He even went back to the stairs and waited before a few before coming back to wake Rick for his turn at watch. Daryl settled himself on the floor between us and where Ed would come from when he woke.

Daryl had saved my life, covered it up from my own father, kept me awake while I was concussed and put me to bed before anyone was the wiser about our secret friendship.

The man was good.

I smiled, knowing I had a friend like that. Hell, I was happy to have a friend at all.

"Thank you," I whispered into the air. I saw him nod ever so slightly.

I smiled, again, before closing my eyes.


	8. Chapter 8 - Daryl

halodoll89, DarkAngelShadow, hillaryn, Jasmin Jade xx, SOA longing mom, Ashvarden, and itsi3 - thanks for all the love... and the brownie points :)

**Chapter 8 - Daryl**

I'm dragging T-Dog's sorry ass back to the RV when I see the whole group staring over the side of the guard rail.

"What's all this?"

Everyone turns, but only has eyes for the blood on T-Dog's arm.

"Oh my god, were you bit?" asks Skeletor. She sounds upset but takes a step back as if from a monster instead of forward, towards an injured friend.

"Dumb ass here managed to get himself cut on a car door," I say.

"Daryl saved my ass," says T-Dog, "I'd've been a lot more'n bit if it wasn't for him."

Everyone's looking at me all of a sudden, so I decide it's best to change the subject.

"Now, y'all wanna tell me why you was starin' into the woods like your lives depended on it? Last I checked, the herd went that way," I say, jutting my thumb over my shoulder.

Everyone looks back and forth between one another, but it's Skeletor who speaks.

"After it seemed like the herd had passed, Sophia tried to move out from under the car she was hiding under.

"A geek saw, which got the attention a second geek. Sophia ran toward the woods. The geeks went after her."

My blood runs cold as I search the group for Carol. She's no where to be found but I see her Pa as he's pullin' open the passenger door of a near by car and plopping his fat as down.

"Carol and I were hiding under the same car," continues Skeletor. When she saw Sophia in danger, she tried to go to her, but I held her back before she could bring the whole herd back down on us."

"A little girl gets chased into the woods by geeks and you all just watched it happen?" I spit.

"Not all, Rick went after her."

She sounds bitter about it. As far as I'm concerned, Rick just went up in my estimation.

"And that is when my dumb ass daughter decided to get herself killed too," I glare at Ed with an itchy trigger finger before Skeletor draws my attention away.

"Even after Rick followed Sophia into the woods Carol kept fighting me. I held her for as long as I could but she broke free of my grasp and bolted for the guard rail before anyone could stop her."

I shake my head in disgust and head toward the guard rail myself.

"Wait, Daryl stop."

I feel a vice grip on my arm and turn around to see King Shane.

"No sense risking anymore people over this. The chances of you getting lost yourself are greater than you finding them."

"You don't know me," I say turning to leave, but he just tightens his grip.

"Way I see it, we should just wait here 'til they get back."

I don't have time for this. I cock my arm back and punch him in the face. His nose made a satisfying crunching noise which brought a smile to my face as I turn back toward the woods. No one tries to stop me after that.

I find their trail pretty easily and start after them at a run.

The tracks get muddled when they meet up with a creek.

I try to sort it out, getting down on my haunches to get a better look.

"Tell me what happened," I whisper to the mud.

Rick and Sophia's tracks lead into the water, so do a geek's. Carol's stop there and it looks like she get's down on her knees.

The image of Carol crumbling to the gound and sobbing in despair hits my brain hard enough to make me wince.

_Focus shit-head._

A second geek's tacks remain on the this side of the creek, but keep going away from the highway. After a while, the second geek's foot prints lead into the water. I look across to the other side to see Rick and the geeks' tracks leave the water on the opposing bank.

_No Sophia?_

I go back to where their tracks enter the water, where Carol had knelt. She must have tracked them as far as the water. Impressive considering her how little experience she has.

I look at the ground where Carol knelt and see Sophia's tracks come out of the water to stand right in front of Carol before both their tracks lead back toward the highway.

I'm on the move again.

Halfway back to the highway, I come across a geek someone put down.

Carol and Sophia's track had been side by side, then they stopped, stood still.

Carol's foot prints alone lead up to the dead geek and then both her and Sophia's tracks go off in a new direction, away from the highway. Each foot fall is farther apart than usual. They're running.

I look around to see what they're running from.

Three more sets of near identical tracks come toward the girls'. One line of foot prints next to large swipes like they're dragging one foot, geeks.

I take off at a slow jog following the tracks. They were very fresh, but the further the prints get from the creak bed, the harder they are to read.

I came up on one of the geeks after a few minutes. He must'a been a slow fucker to get left in the dust by other geeks. I pull my hunting knife from its sheath and stab the geek through the temple without breaking my stride. By the time it's body hits the floor I'm already gone from sight.

The girls might be getting harder to track, but the geeks that're after 'em leave pretty distinct trails.

I crest some high ground to see the geeks below, staggering forward, but no Carol or Sophia.

Just as a geek passes a tree, Carol pops out and buries her knife in the creature's skull.

The geek drops but the knife goes with it, ripping the handle from her grasp. She looks at her empty hand and then up at the last walker almost on her.

I lift my cross bow and pull the trigger, watching the last geek drop at Carol's feet. Descending the high ground, I feel a weird sense of deja vu.

Carol looks at me, stumbling a bit, chest heaving.

"I thought I told you always to go for the eyes so your knife don't get stuck in no skull," I say in a puff.

"Oh, you did," she says through hefting breaths.

"Damn woman, don't you never listen?"

We exchange a look and break out into a gentle chuckle before Carol's eyes roll up in her head and she goes limp. I run forward and catch her around the middle. Looking around I see Sophia's little head peak out from behind a tree.

"Come on over here girl, your big sister needs help."

Sophia nods as I swing Carol's legs up so I can cradle my arm under her knees. It's getting dark and we'll need some shelter. No way we're making it back to the highway tonight.


	9. Chapter 9 - Carol

6747, Jasmin Jade XX, HarmineandMarcus, halodoll89, itsi3, SOA loving mom, Rai, DarkAngelsShadow, and mygnomefriend - thanks for the 3

DarkAngelsShadow- I'm not going to lie, Carol going after Sophia was my whole impetus for writing this story. It always drove me crazy that Rick went after Sophia and Carol didn't. So, then I got to thinking, what kind of person would have the courage to go after Sophia, but not be able to stand up to Ed? And yeah, Lori's nickname tickles me every time.

mygnomefriend - I'm glad you enjoyed Shane getting punched in the face. I put it in for no other reason then I really wanted to see someone break that guys nose.

Yeah I own nothing... except the original stuff.

**Chapter 9 - Carol**

I woke to the sound of a gun shot, alone and in a strange house.

_Sophia?_

I scrambled to my feet and peeked out the window.

Letting out a breath I ripped the door open and ran to the two figures facing away from me in the yard.

"Sophia!"

Sophie spun around.

"Carol!"

I couldn't stop myself from crying I was so happy. I dropped to my knees when I reached her and wrapped my arms around her with a force that brought us both to the ground.

Laughing and crying, I kissing every inch of her face and nose and hair I could reach. We must have been quite a sight.

Daryl gave us the moment. Never taking his eyes from the woods, it reminded me what had awoken me. Sobering I climbed to my feet. I held out my hand to help Sophia up but couldn't seem to let her go once she was standing. I was never letting that girl out of my sight again.

"Was that a gun shot?"

Daryl nodded without looking at me.

"Daryl?"

This time he turned to meet my gaze.

I reached out my hand to touch his shoulder but he flinched away and I dropped it.

"Thank you for comin' for us, I don't think we would have made it if it wasn't for you."

He shook his head, "that little girl is alive because of you. If you hadn'ta gone after her..."

He let the words linger in the air not wanting to frighten Sophie. "Rick led the first two walkers away but she still wouldn't have made it back if you hadn'ta been there."

I looked at him confused.

"How did you know Rick led the first two walkers away?"

Daryl looked at me like I was dumb, "I read the tracks."

He was right, I was dumb. I had seen him in action. He read tracks like they were neon road signs.

How this incredibly capable, talented man came to care whether two burdens like Sophia and I lived or died was beyond me, but it was probably the first bit of luck we've had in our whole lives.

"Daryl, I just wanted to say that your friendship, it just means the world to us."

He frowned at me, looking like he was gonna tell me to stop my nonsense when Sophie, quite little Sophie piped up. "I'm real glad we met you, too," said Sophie, peaking out from behind my back.

Shock was written clear as day on my face. Girl almost never spoke to adults, to anyone really. I twisted around to smile at her and she looked up at me giving me a serious nod.

We both looked at Daryl then who frowned back at us before looking back to the woods.

"You ladies got all your shit? We best be getting back. Don't much like the implications'a that gun shot. What ever they are, don't bode well for our group."

I nodded, checked that my knife was in my pocket and against all odds Sophia still had her doll.

I nodded to Daryl and we headed back.

He shot squirls as we went. Sophia seemed to have trouble baring witness to the demise of the small fury cuteness but all I saw was dinner. Lord knows we hadn't had a proper meal since the CDC.

After an hour of walking Daryl stopped dead.

I leaned against a tree. I couldn't believe how far away from the highway we had run without realizing it. My thoughts drifted to the first time Daryl and I had spoken and he had told me I needed to feed myself as well as Sophie or I would be too weak to take care of her. Per usual he was right. As I battled another dizzy spell I vowed from then on to eat my fair share.

"What do you see?" I asked seeing the wheels turning in his brain and realizing he stopped to look at tracks not take a break. He would never show that kind of weakness.

_He would never be that weak._

"You tell me," he said, surprising me.

I pushed off the tree and stood beside him.

"Deer tracks," lowering myself to my haunches and touched the small divot in the ground. "They're fresh!"

I looked up at Daryl excited at thought of eating something fresh that wasn't squirrel.

Daryl nodded, his eyes flicking to Sophie quickly.

"The other's will be worried, not sure if we should take any longer to get back, especially not knowing what that gunshot was about."

_Translation. I'm not sure it's a good idea with the kid. She's a liability, can't focus on hunting and protecting at the same time. Besides she'll slow us down so much it might be a wasted effort anyway._

"The other's will forgive us when we bring back food enough to fill all their bellies and then some. Besides what ever the situation surrounding the shot, there was only one and it was near an hour ago. Can't imagine our arrival could have much effect on it now."

He nodded, but as he passed me to follow the tracks he whispered, "she's your responsibility then."

I snorted.

_Like I needed reminding. _

I walked beside Daryl, Sophia's hand in mine as he pointed out what different things meant in a soft undertone.

He guessed at the weight of the dear, told me how to tell if it was walking or running.

Before long he held up his hand and I knew to stand motionless. He lifted his crossbow, took in a breath, held it. With one eye closed he trailed the doe through his scope and pulled the trigger.

The deer staggered and Daryl sprinted forward knife drawn to end it.

I covered Sophia's eyes but never took my own away. I would learn everything I could from Daryl. He was a survivor.

Sophia was drawing in the dirt with a stick, careful to avoid looking at Daryl as he field dressed the creature.

I could tell he wanted to move as quickly as possible so I didn't ask him to teach me but I watched over his shoulder so I would at least have a general idea.

Somehow noticing me standing over him without turning around he started describing what he was doing and why without slowing the quick, efficient stokes of his hand.

As he spoke I heard something and looked up to see a geek coming toward us. I ran up and put me knife through its eye. Strutting back over to Daryl I said, "look who's not paying attention to their surroundings now."

Without looking up or pausing in his work he said, "good girl, you're learning to be more aware of your surroundings, but you missed one."

"What, where?"

I spun around and saw it, a second geek coming from the opposite direction. I growled and ran off to take care of it.

Geek gore all over my hand and knife I realized why Daryl always had a rag in his back pocket. I did a few 360s making sure I checked every direction as I headed back.

"How'd you know," I asked.

He snorted, his back still to me and I could practically feel him rolling his eyes. He was always just one step ahead.

I knelt on the ground wiping the gore off my hand.

_I wonder if anyone else in the group knows how good he really is? How sharp? Does he keeps them in the dark on purpose or because he doesn't realize it himself? _

I was filthy, starving and dead tired when we finally made it back to the highway. At first I thought we had come back to the wrong spot, but Daryl had made me follow our tracks back, like some kind of post apocalypse class assignment. If I'd gone off the trail he would have said something.

Daryl dropped his load and walked over to a car with supplies on the hood. On the windshield in white paint it read,

"Sophia

Carol

Daryl

Stay here

We will come every day"

"They left us," said Sophie, in a small voice.

I reached out my arms and she came to me. I lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around my torso.

"No baby, something must have happened," I said squeezing her around the middle. "They'll be back for us tomorrow, you'll see."

"Might be better if they don't," said Daryl.

I glared at him over my shoulder and he huffed stalking off toward the woods. I grabbed two bottles of water and handed one to Sophie, eyeing her to make sure she drank it before chugging mine.

I used some of my water to wash off my hands before looking through the non perishables they left us on the hood. I opened a can of pickles and took a bite into one. Not a smart choice since the pickles would dehydrate me, but I always liked pickles.

I offered the open jar to Sophie and she looks at me.

"Daddy gets mad when we eat out of the jar," she said in a small voice.

"Daddy ain't here," I said with a wink, fighting the urge to check over my shoulder for him like he was the bogey man.

She gives me a small smile and plucks one out of the jar. As she takes a bite I lean over so we're face to face and whisper, "guess what?"

She looks at me.

"We get a whole day without Pa," I said with a smile. She smiled up at me and took a second pickle with her other hand. I laughed as she chomped down on the pickle in her right hand, chewed and then took an enthusiastic bite from the pickle in her left hand.

The smell of smoke attracted my attention then so I stuffed the food, blankets, flashlight, bottles of water and Gatorade into the satchel they left, grabbed Sophia's hand and followed the smell.

"We best stay off the highway," said Daryl as we approached.

"When we're done cookin' this here venison we should move to another spot incase the smell attacks anyone, geeks or otherwise," he said in a pointed way that reminded me of the massacre at the old folk's home in Atlanta. Geeks weren't the only thing out there to worry about.

Next a low burning fire on the other side of the highway from where Daryl had roasted up a squirrel and venison all-you-can-eat buffet, I leaned against a tree. Sophia had fallen asleep, her head in my lap. I absently stroked her hair as I stared into the flames.

Daryl had scavenged through the cars on the highway for something air tight to wrap our left overs in.

After doing his best to make sure no geeks or wild animals would smell the meat he went off in the woods to hang it from a high branch a safe distance from our camp.

"Hate to survive all them geeks just to get eaten by a black bear," he joked before disappearing. At least I thought he was joking.

I listened hard to all the sounds around me but I was still surprised when he appeared in the soft glow of our fire.

_God he was quite, how'd he do that?_

He nodded to me before plopping down on the opposite side of the fire.

"Get some sleep I'll take first watch," he said softly.

I stared into the fire, for a while, before I responded.

"What did you mean before, when you said it might be better if they others don't come back for us?" I mustered all my courage and looked him straight in the eye.

He sized me up, like he was trying to read my thoughts.

Chewing on his nail, he moved his glance back to the safety of the fire.

"Smaller group is more maneuverable. Quicker, less conspicuous, less mouths to feed."

"What about strength in numbers?" I asked.

"I got the number of everyone in that group and trust me, them numbers don't add up," he said shaking his head. "Skeletor ain't got no kind'a use in THIS world. Carl's just another mouth to feed. Andrea's bat shit crazy over her dead sister. Glen is good at supply runs but ain't no one in the whole group as quiet as the three of us, so it's not like he's adding a skill we don't have. T-Dog has mediocre aim with no other discernible skills of use. Dale is old as fuck but can fix up old ass RVs - which is only useful because HIS old ass RV keeps breaking down. Shane has is a great shot and the kind of cut throat kind of thinking that you need to survive now, but he his only looking out for himself, Lori, and Carl. He would hang any one of us out to dry as long as he could keep them safe. Did he risk himself to go on that supply run to Atlanta? No. Did he care about protecting anyone but Lori and Carl the night the camp got attacked at the quarry? No. Did he go after Sophia when she got chased by geeks into the woods? No. What good is a good shot to us if he ain't got our backs."

I was stunned. I had never heard Daryl say so much at one time. And, he had said no one in the group was as quiet as the three of us.

_"Us." He thought Sophia and I could be useful. _

"What about Rick?" I asked.

Daryl looked up at me from the fire.

"Rick? Decent shot. Can't track or hunt for shit and makes a hell of a wracked stomping through the woods, but he went back for my brother even though Merle weren't shit to him. Went after Sophia too. He's a good man, who'd have our backs, but his decency could be just as much a liability as an asset. That hero shit COULD have gotten you killed back when the world was pretending to be civilized, now it's a guaranteed death sentence.

"What ever Rick, Glenn, or Dale might bring to the table, it don't out weigh liability the other's present."

I laughed gently.

"Something funny?" he spat.

"That's a fine bit of logical reasoning Daryl. Very pragmatic."

"But..." he said cocking an eyebrow.

"Follow the same line of thought and the burden that Sophie and I represent far out weighs anything we could bring to the table, and by my calculation, that ain't much."

"Why you always got to be so dumb," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"You're quite, you listen and you're a fast learner. I could make a hunter out of you," he said sizing me up again. "Sophia brings nothing to the table but she ain't so much a burden. Ain't more then 60 lbs., that girl, sopping wet. Small mouth to feed as far as it goes and she keeps out of my way. Less annoying then most kids.

"And lets not forget your most valuable asset..."

_What's between my legs?_

"No one can keep awake all the time," he said. "If I keep you around then I have someone to keep watch so I can get some shut eye."

I looked at him.

"Aren't you always saying I'm woefully unaware of my surroundings?" I asked, half joking, half dead serious.

"No less aware then most of the others, and your getting better."

He was serious. He would take on the burden of Sophia and I and consider it a deal well struck for losing the others.

"Well, in that case, why don't you let me take first watch," I said. "I slept all through last night and I imagine you haven't slept in a solid 24 hours."

"Don't have to ask me twice," he said sinking to the ground.

Laying with his hands tucked behind his head, looking up at the canopy of branches he said in a quite voice, "is Sophia asleep?"

I nodded my head.

He looked up when he didn't hear an answer.

_Idiot._

"Yes," I whispered.

"How much does she know... about what he does to you?"

I was quiet for a long time. Angry. I wanted to tell him to shut the hell up. Tell him it was none of his business. I wanted to cry and run away, ashamed. I wanted to vomit at the thought of him knowing wha'd bin done to me. In the end I gave into to the hopeless irrefutability that I owed him my life several times over. It was his to do with what he pleased, I didn't see I had the right to refuse him anything.

"As little as possible," I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. "I would love nothing more then for her to go her whole life without ever knowing."

He was quiet for a long time and I thought maybe he had fallen asleep but then his voice rose out of the darkness once again.

"I know you're all about strength in numbers, so maybe you put a different value on things then I do..."

He chewed on his lip for a second, like he was trying to decide if he was really gonna say what he was about to say.

"But, I think if you factored in that cutting our losses and heading out on our own would mean you'd never see your Pa again, and neither would she... I could be wrong, but I think that might make your calculations and mine add up to the same conclusion."

I didn't have a response to that, but and he didn't speak again for the rest of my watch. His words echoed around in my head, though, and if nothing else, they insured that I was in no risk of dosing off during my shift.


	10. Chapter 10 - Carol

DarkAngelsShadow, felicia2235, Jasmon Jade xx, itsi3, SOA loving mom, halodoll89 - Thanks for the love :)

**I own nothing...**

**Chapter 10 - Carol**

The next morning we returned to the car where they left us supplies and the "note."

Sophia stood on the car scouting into the distance over the grave yard of sedans, SUVs and Minivans.

Daryl leaned against a nearby car, chewing on his thumb nail and watching me pace.

I went over what he had said last night for the thousandth time, hundred-thousandth. When I consider that there's no reason our chances of survival would be better sticking with the group rather than taking to the road with just Daryl, I had to ask myself: Do I really trust this man enough to go off alone with him? Trust his with our lives? Trust him with Sophia?

Trust wasn't something I did. I trusted no one, never have. Sophia trusts me to protect her and I love her, but I've never had to trust Sophia, rely on her.

I stopped mid pace and looked at Sophie scouting for the others like a pirate in a crow's nest, then back at Daryl.

Walking over to him I plopped into a leaning position next to him.

He had saved Sophia and my life twice and my own life a third time. Not once had he asked for anything in return, even when he taught me skills that were invaluable in this world or shared the fruits of his hunts with us.

"Did you mean it?" I asked quietly, so Sophie couldn't hear.

He looked at me startled.

"Did you mean it when you said we could take off, the three of us?"

He held my gaze and nodded once.

I smiled tightly, my leg shaking so hard my whole body shook. I stamped my foot down to make it stop.

"Alright let's just do it, let's just go."

He gave me soft smile, in anyone else I would have mistaken it for a twitch, but I was learning to read the subtle changes in expression on his ever grim features.

He gave a swift nod and pushed off the car, then froze, staring passed Sophia.

"What? What is it?"

"Too late," he said softly, giving me a side long glance and sad smile before wincing it off his face.

That's when I heard it, a car, it must be the others.

"Maybe they haven't seen us yet," I whispered more a prayer then a hope.

Just then Sophia started jumping on the car waving her arms.

"Well if they hadn't before..." Daryl left me to finish the thought.

"Well for about two seconds there, it was a really nice dream," I said looking at him.

He furrowed his brow and pursed his lips before giving me a tight nod.

The car was speeding toward us and I could see Shane and Andrea in the front seat.

Turning to face him I looked up into his eyes, trying to convey all the earnestness of what I was trying to communicate.

"Please believe me, there is nothing Sophie and I value more highly then your friendship. We're friends right?"

He looked at me for a long moment, like he was only just then deciding and gave me a slight nod.

I smiled at him, a big smile, it was nice to know for sure. I'd never really had a friend. It felt good.

"Listen, I think it would be best- for now- if we kept our friendship a secret- we could be like secret alleys."

Daryl cocked his eyebrow at me, giving me a long look, before turning his attention to the car as it pulled to a stop just feet from us.

Andrea burst from the car almost before it came to a stop.

"Oh, my god, your all actually alive."

She pulled Sophia off the roof of the car she was standing sentinel on and engulfed her in a bear hug.

Lowering the girl to the ground she strode up to me and did the same to me.

It took all my strength not to flinch. I couldn't force myself to hug her back, even though I was genuinely touched that she care so much, so I just stood very still until it was over.

She pulled away and smiled at me, squeezing my shoulders.

Touching Daryl's arm ever so briefly she gave him a big smile too.

"Daryl, you did it, you actually found them," she said.

Just then Dale stepped out of the car, with the look of a man seeing a ghost, or a miracle.

"I sure am glad to see you three," he said, "I won't lie when Rick came back without you I thought the worst."

"So what happened?" asked Andrea, looking from me to Daryl. "How did you find them?"

Daryl snorted and leaned against the car.

"I don't know what y'all talkin' 'bout. Y'all said Rick was handling it so I figured it was a good time to go hunt, seeing as how we couldn't leave 'til we found these two dumb bitches."

I flinched at his words, I knew what he was doing and it was just what I asked, but it still hurt to hear my one friend in the world talk about Sophie and I like that.

"Bagged myself a good sized doe, still a decent amount left," he said switching his gaze from Andrea to Dale. "I came back yesterday a little before dusk to see ya'all had up and left."

He gave me a side long glance, "I only ran into these two this morning when I came back to the car."

Andrea looked at me then and it was my turn to talk.

I ignored how Sophie was staring at Daryl and I. She was only paying attention so she didn't mess it up if anyone asked her about it later. She was used to this game.

Lying was a means of survival for me. Lying spared me some pain, lying kept Sophia safe. I'd been lying straight faced, to my father so long my heart no longer raced and my hand no longer shook. I didn't even blush anymore.

Lying to others so nothing got back to my father wasn't all that new either, but I wasn't used to having someone else in on the lie with me. Sophie always knew of course, but she'd learned to let me do all the talking.

_I'm not sure how I feel about this..._

"Yeah we must have made camp on opposite sides of the highway," I said. "I ran into Sophie on her way back to the highway. Rick had found her and led off the two geeks casing her."

I didn't have to fake the shudder that ran down my body, and I didn't try to suppress it, hoping it would lend validity to my story.

"On our way back we came across four more geeks. There were two many of them to take on all at once so I killed the closest and we made a run for it. We managed to lose one just by because it was so slow. The other two I got rid of one by one, running 'til we were out of sight, hiding, and then ambushing them from behind."

Andrea's gasps and Dale's understanding nods gave me confidence that they were buying it.

"By the time I had killed the last geek we were too far to make it back before dark. By chance we found an abandoned house to shelter us for the night and then made our way back in the morning."

"To find us gone," whispered Andrea, clearly distressed.

"No," I shook my head, "to find your note that you were coming back for us."

I gave her a tight smile, trying to reassure her that it was o.k.

"Which you did," added Daryl in a dower tone. "You leavin' have anything to do with that gun shot I heard."

"We heard it too," I added.

Andrea paled.

"Yes," said Dale, nodding. "When you lot never came back Rick organized a group to search for you, everyone really except, myself, T-Dog, and your father."

I looked at him.

"I needed to stay behind to fix the RV, and T-Dog, was in no condition to be up and about," he added, hastily.

"Dumb ass cut his arm open on a car door when he saw the herd coming at him," Daryl added, vouching for T-Dog in his own special way.

I just looked at him, slack jaw. "How is he still alive?" I gasped.

"Daryl saved his life," said Dale excitedly.

I looked at Daryl. He gave me a side long glance and shook his head dismissively.

Giving him the break from unwanted attention I asked about the pink elephant in the room. "And my father?"

"Ah, yes," said Dale stalling, perhaps hesitant to divulge the failings of a father to his daughters. He was a good man to try, but this was a drop in the bucket. If only neglect and apathy were the worst of his sins. Ed not protecting us was a relaxing change of pace from him being the one we needed protection from.

"He felt someone should stay behind and protect Dale and T-Dog," said Andrea hastily.

"Are we gonna get to explaining that gunshot anytime today?" asked Daryl, moving the conversation along I think more as a kindness to me then out of actual impatience.

"As I said," continued Dale, "almost the whole group was out looking for you. At mid day when the search came up cold, Rick sent everyone back to the highway but kept on going with Shane and Carl."

Here Dale, paused.

"Carl was shot," blurted out Andrea.

I gasped and pulled Sophie close to me.

"He's alive," assured Dale. "But he's in bad shape."

"What the hell happened?" asked Daryl, unable to mask the disbelief in his voice.

"We'll explain everything," said Dale, looking around nervously, "but let's finish this conversation on the way back to the others."

"Agreed," I said, realizing we shouldn't have lingered on the highway a second longer then we had to.

"I'm just gonna get ma venison," said Daryl, stocking off to the woods, "Be right back."


	11. Chapter 11 - Daryl

Tigerlily xoxo - alas Ed is still alive and being a fat ass... for now

DarkAngelShadow - you definitely hit the nail as far as Carol's motivation went

Shadowhunter89 - It was tempting just to have them take off, but this story is all about facing demons, so in the end they had to go back.

itsi3 - that's really weird cause I kinda have a similar scene replaying in my head, I'll have to see if I can work that in for you :)

As always folks, thanks for the love.

I don't own shit...

**Chapter 11 - Daryl**

Daryl set up his camp at the far end of the Greene farm. It was close to the woods where he could hunt, covered enough to give him privacy, but close enough to see everything that was happening back at camp.

They'd all been livin' on top of each other so long it was just nice to have some space.

He had actually considered putting up his tent right next to Carol's Pa's so he could keep and eye - and an ear - out for those girls, but he figured that wouldn't help them too much. Besides when he got to camp he saw that Ed had done and put himself between Rick and King Shane's tents, or they had done and put him there.

Whether it was Ed's cowardice of Rick's suspicion, I was glad of it. Wouldn't stop Ed from hurtin' those girls but they would be safe enough while in their tent at least.

The sun hadn't quite risen yet and the world was asleep except for myself and -

"You're late," I said.

Carol poked her head out from behind a tree. "One of these days I am gonna sneak up on you," she said with a mischievous smile. It was a real smile, not the tight, sad one she usually pulled out.

I wondered if the other's had ever even seen her smile, her real smile. She always seemed so different when it was just us two, or three when Sophia was around.

She seemed alive and bold, like a real person. It amazed me. I knew what she was dealin' with, knew better than most what it did to a person. We were both damaged, but for her it was like water off a ducks back when she was away from her daddy. Well, not entirely, but more than I could ever manage.

"Sophie is learning to milk the cows with Beth this morning and then has "school" with Carl and Skeletor," she said, catching the pack I threw her. Technically it was her pack that she kept at my camp. Some hunting supplies of Merle's that he didn't need any more - and her daddy didn't need to know she knew how to use.

I watched her unbuckle her belt and lace it through the sheath of her hunting knife.

A very little smile pulled at the side of my lips. She was a sight. Big black boots, tight black jeans, spikes all over and a Ka-Bar 1235 fixed blade hunting knife with a near 6 inch blade on her hip. By now she was gettin' real good with it too.

We had been at the farm a month now and Carol seemed to find herself at my camp every time her Pa was asleep. I ragged her about it all the time, but truth is I didn't mind her company and that puts her on a real exclusive list.

Every morning before dawn she would find a way for Sophie to be safe from her Pa and we would hunt. He was a lazy fuck and probably wouldn't wake-up until late morning anyway, but we made sure of it. When I heard Glenn was going on a run to a drug store I discreetly followed him and the Greene girl.

Kinda wished I hadn't when I saw that they was doin' more'n diggin around for supplies in there. After they left I snuck in and found all the prescription sleeping pills in the place.

Carol had been dosing his dinner with it every night. It had been working so far, keeping them safe, at night at least...

Carol gave me the look that said she was ready to go. I tossed her my cross bow and she looked at me confused.

"Today you lead."

There it was again. That smile. Big and open and happy in an untainted kinda way. I don't know why I was always so glad to see it, but I was starting to accept the reality that this girl was in fact a friend of mine and that seeing her smile gave me pleasure for some unknown reason.

I had never had a friend before.

Maybe that's part of what the whole friendship thing is all about, being happy to see them happy. Maybe her big ol' smiles gave me hope that one day I wouldn't be so broken.

_What are you a homo? _Asked a voice soundin' a whole lot like my brothers.

We walked through the woods in silence. It was a comfortable silence, both us focused on the task.

I always felt better out here. We're all animals. Humans like to pretend their somethin' above it all and they act like you're fuckin' weird if you don't play pretend with them. But out here, I didn't have to pretend, and neither did she.

I watched her, letting her lead, never more or less than a half'a'step behind. She was a huntress, a feline predator. All her movements graceful, purposeful, silent.

Sometimes I had to remind myself that this woman, this confident, clever, spunky woman shared a body with the meek subservient slip of a girl that took the place of my friend any time the other's were around.

They couldn't possibly be the same person? What made her so different when it was just us. Am I different when I'm alone with her?

It wasn't long before she knelt down and touched the fresh laid tracks of a buck.

I had to say, the best thing about staying in one place was that we were starting to get a feel for the lay of the land, what the high traffic areas were for local wildlife.

She looked up at me, but I just shrugged. I wanted her to do this all on her own.

A devilish smile and a gleam in her eye was her only reply. The hunt was on. We would eat well tonight.

She walked beside the tracks, eyes going back and forth from the ground to the forest. She had finally learned to pay attention to her surroundings. I smiled at her back, proud in spite of myself.

It took us hours to stalk that buck. The first time we caught up with him, Carol lined him up in her scope but she was nervous, maybe afraid he'd catch wind of us and take off. She didn't take the time she needed to line up the shot proper and ended up getting him in the hind quarter. Still, it slowed him down and it didn't take near as long to catch up with him the second time.

When we did, Carol tried to offer the crossbow back to me but I crossed my arms and jerked my chin in the direction of the deer. She could do this. Girl was a natural.

She lifted the bow, inhaled, held her breath and the buck took his last.

It was a broadside, lung shot. Beautiful. We were already sprinting forward before the 200 pound beast hit the ground with collapsed lungs.

I didn't have to tell her to end it. She knew what to do.

Stoking the creature's neck she whispered, "I'm sorry. Thank you." Then she drew her knife across its jugular and the life went out of its eyes.

I retreated a few steps and sat, leaning against a near by tree as she field dress the dear.

After a while I noticed a geek was approaching from her 6.

I wouldn't have let it get her but I wanted to give her the chance to notice it. It was starting to get too close for comfort and I was tensing to spring foward when she piped up with-

"You gonna get that?"

She didn't look up, just kept on with her work.

I smiled to my self at her unwitting timing. Relaxing back into the tree I bit back my smile and pretended to be very busy cleaning under my nails with my knife.

She paused in her work when I didn't respond to give me a dirty look over her shoulder.

"Oh, no, please don't get up," she said, rising and spinning on her heal in one fluid motion. "I wouldn't want you to trouble yourself."

She pulled out the buck knife that I gave to her before going to Atlanta for Merle and strode up to the geek, brushed aside it grasping hands and plunged the blade into its eye. Wiping the blade on a spare rag she folded it and tucked it back in her pocket where she kept it always.

Then, she was back to work, with her Ka-Bar on the buck.

It was getting to be mid morning when we made it back to my camp.

Dropping the 80 pound pack full of venison steaks, Carol collapsed onto the log I had pulled over to my fire pit.

She was glaring at me.

"Whad you just do?" I asked sitting across from her.

"Field dressed and lugged back the whole dam buck by myself," she spat, "No, thanks to you."

I couldn't help a crooked smile from pulling at my lips. "What else."

"Oh, you know, take care of the geek that was coming at me from behind. You know, if you weren't going to help the least you could have done was have my back."

"What else?"

She looked at me like I was stupid and then seemed to catch on.

I big smile spread across her face.

"I took the buck down."

"How'd you find it?"

"I tracked it."

"Let me get this straight, you tracked, killed, field dressed and carried back a buck all on your own?"

"Yeah, I did," she smiled.

"Could you do it again," I asked.

"Yeah, I think I could," she said more seriously, like a revelation.

"I think you could too," I said.

We looked at each other for a moment and she covered her mouth with her before busting out in giddy little laughs like breathy chuckles.

That must be the laugh of someone unaccustomed to joy, I thought. Then the same breathy laugh broke out of the grin that I had let slip across my face and that confirmed it.

My little slip seems to only feed her growing fit and her hand dropped into her lap as if it had been shot down by the deep belly laugh that burst from her lips. It was short lived, she reined it back in with a deep breath but her smile remained.

_Quit smiling you look like a fucking idiot, _I heard Merle's voice rattle from the back of my head.

"Now," I said, putting a serious expression back into place on my face, "we are running out of morning and you still haven't demonstrated that you are entirely capable of surviving on your own."

She, nodded no longer pissed that I wasn't raising a hand to help.

"Now, get a fire started, no tinder neither, what do you always call it? Right, boy scout style, and then get this venison cooked."

She got busy and I got to relaxing.

I had to give it to her, she was right. First thing the girl had ever said to me was that teaching someone else what I can do would lighten my load.


	12. Chapter 12 - Carol

mygnomefriend, Jasmin Jade xx, Cristina11 and itsi3 - Thanks for the love!

Cristina11 & Shadowhunter89 - I promise I will try and get to Daryl's age in the story. He is older than Carol is in this story but younger than he is in the show.

**Chapter 12 - Carol**

Carol was light headed, euphoric even. Daryl had given her the one thing she had ever wanted. Freedom. The kind that only came from true independence. In this world that meant being able to survive 100% on your own.

She took her accustomed path through the woods so the she would come out of the trees from a different direction then Daryl's mini camp.

The others must suspect something because they never mentioned her morning disappearing act when her father was around. Even still, she thought it best to keep as many people in the dark about as many things as she could.

_You can't tell what you don't know._

That's why she always popped out behind the Greene house. It was out of the camp's line of sight and that way no one knew for sure when she came or left or where she had gone.

For now, though, she was still safe under the canopy of trees. She had come to love the forest. Strange that she felt safer here, alone with geeks roaming around than she did at camp. So much for safety in numbers.

She shook thoughts of camp and all the pit falls it offered out of her head. For a few minuets longer she was still Morning Carol and she smiled, remembering Daryl's words as she was getting ready to leave.

_"Seems like we are going to be here a while so it's actually worth the time to set up traps," after a pause he added almost shyly, "I could teach you."_

_I smiled at him as he chewed on his thumb nail and it occurred to me that he might suspect I was just using him to learn to hunt and that I would disappear now that I didn't need him anymore. I considered suggesting that we take a break and just hang out tomorrow to celebrate my graduating hunting 101 but I wasn't sure if he was ready to spend time together without the pretense of teaching me something useful. _

_"Thanks Daryl, sounds great!" I said with a big smile that surprised me. "I'll see you tomorrow. Same time, same place?"_

_Sometimes I felt like I was a kid around him. No history, no scars. _

_He gave his customary, crooked, tight lipped version of a smile and sharp nod of the head. _

I realized I was still wearing the same big smile I wore when he offered to teach me how to trap. A smile would look out of place on my face to the others. I schooled my features into the passive mask I usually wore as I broke the tree line, but my thoughts lingered behind in the realm of my morning activities.

I realized that Daryl was the same as me, to a lesser extent. In being a kid I mean. Well, more kid like.

He was more relaxed during our mornings. He smiled more, or I guess I should say he smiled. I'm not sure I've ever seen him smile in front of the others. Wouldn't want to let those defenses down.

Not that I could judge. I had the emotional Great Wall of China built around myself.

_People build defenses for a reason._

The thought popped into my head unbidden and it started some wheels turning.

Daryl never looked at me with pitty, ever, even though he knew everything. He never touched. It was like an unspoken agreement between us, we never touched each other. I don't think it's even conscious, our bodies would just shy away from each other like two positive charges. I always thought it was him trying respect my own personal space issues but now I'm so sure.

Maybe we're two people who were never able to be children. Maybe somehow when we're together that gives us leave to be silly or playful or have fun.

I snorted out loud, shaking my head.

_Talk about dreams of grander. _

I'll take the baby steps we've taken together, small smiles and hesitant laughter.

_But hey, maybe someday we'll be capable of those things. A girl can hope, right? Can't hurt to hope. _

I heard myself snort again.

_Sure honey, keep telling yourself that. _

I stopped and listened as I came up on the back of the Greene house. I didn't hear anyone so I grabbed the buckets of water from the well behind the house that I had stashed earlier today.

I came around the corner and saw Andrea up on the RV keeping watch. We met eyes and I gave her a little smile.

I know Lori complains that Andrea isn't helping with the laundry and cooking and "women's" work, but I think it's great. I think she's great. My father didn't allow Sophie and I to go to the gun training with everyone else, surprise, surprise, but I heard the others talking about how she was a natural. She's already one of the best shots we have and with a little more experience, I bet she'll be the best mark's man in the group.

She isn't a mother nor does she have a husband or little sister... Not anymore. Why should she be doing the men's laundry who are no relation to her? Besides with a talent like her's I'd rather she was up on that RV. Why should she be criticized like she's lazy for keeping the camp safe just because she has ovaries instead of testicles?

I put my buckets down by our fire pit for anyone who needed them and looked around for where Lori had set up school.

"Hey Carol."

I looked around to see Dale stepping out of the RV.

I gave the old man a little smile.

"Dale."

"Ah, I see you took it upon yourself to bring us all some much needed water," he said, kneeling down to dip a tin camping cup into one of the buckets with a splash. "I've noticed," he said, then paused, "that you must be accustomed to going it on your own."

Here he paused again and held my gaze.

"But I just want to make sure that you understand that if need help, all you have to do is ask."

I felt my defenses go up as I began to suspect what he was talking about. My little smile sunk back into my passive mask and I felt my eyes glaze over a bit.

He saw it, I could tell, but he wouldn't give up until he finished his little speech. So typical, had to do his due diligence to help the pathetic domestic abuse victim to clear his own conscience. Well, I'm glad I could make you feel better Dale.

"There isn't a single person in this group who wouldn't help you, if you asked for it," Dale, pushed, holding my gaze for another moment. I returned it, looking right through him without really seeing him.

When I felt the moment pass I asked him if he'd seen Lori and the kids. He pointed. I walked away.

_Who the hell did he think he was? _

I sighed.

I liked Dale. He was a good man. Educated, intelligent, fare minded, but that was exactly why he couldn't help. Andrea neither, as much as I liked her, she was a civil rights lawyer, been to college, had a career. They couldn't understand.

I couldn't ask for help without saying what I needed it for and I couldn't tell them, any of them. Sure, they would try, but in the end they would dig deep and all they would come up with was pity and that was the last thing I or my sister needed.

Only Daryl understood. He was my only ally.

Just then I heard the rumble of a motorcycle and turned to see Daryl speed off down the road by himself.

King Shane and Rick popped out of the Greene house at the sound.

"Wonder where he's going," questioned Rick.

"Probably decided to cut his losses and strike out on his own," sneered Shane. "Wouldn't surprise me. You know he went hunting while Carol and Sophia where missing?"

Ever the peace keeper Rick held up his hand to Shane, "Now Shane, it's not as if the rest of us were looking for those girls during that time."

Then he smiled and gave that smile that only men gave other men, "you sure your not just razzed about that broken nose he gave you."

Shane's only response was a derisive look that said, _you're an idiot._

While they had been talking I made a b-line to the porch.

"Where's he off too?" I asked, trying, probably unsuccessfully to make it seem like I was making casual conversation. Something I never did.

"Dunno," answered Rick. Shane just gave me a look I didn't have time to decipher.

"Should you really be letting him go off like that?"

Rick gave me tired smile.

"Daryl doesn't really strike me as the kind of man who you LET do anything," Rick said looking after the dust that Daryl's exit kicked up. "He didn't ask for any help and Shane may be right, he had nothing tying him to this group, he may well have left. I can't spread us any thinner than we already are and risk lives going after a man who might be none too happy to have been followed."

I don't know what made me lose it, it had been the focus of my whole life, keeping my composure, and I still fucked up.

"That's not fair. You'd go after anyone else if they went off on their own and bring them back to safety, whether they would thank you for it or not. Besides, you lost him his brother, you owe him, you owe him a life."

I barely had time to register the shock on King Shane and Rick's faces at the outburst from timid little Carol when the pain came.

Crack! Right in the back of the head.

"What in the hell did I just hear come outchyour damn mouth?"

_Ed, oh god, when did he wake up?_

His grip bit into my bicep, as he dragged me away. That would probably leave a bruise in and of itself.

"What did I tell you about speaking disrespectfully to your betters, to men?"

"Hey!"

It was Rick's voice.

Ed ignored him.

I heard foot steps stocking after us.

_Don't do it Rick, your only gonna make things worse._

"Ed!"

"Rick!" Glenn's voice. "Rick I need to talk to you."

"In a minute."

"No, now, it's important," Glen's voice was like steel. Rick must have taken notice because his footsteps stopped coming after us.

I was disappointed and relieved at the same time. It was better this way. Rick could only delay the inevitable which would only make it worse when it did come.

"First Shane, now Rick," spat Ed as he dragged me along. "Your just fuckin' you way through the whole camp, huh? And, a married man? Fucking whore."

This was going to be bad...


	13. Chapter 13 - Daryl

DarkAngelShadow, felicia2235,DevilWithAnAngelHeart, Jasmin Jade xx, shadowhunter89, and itsi3 - thanks for the love ;)

Jasmin Jade xx - Yes, yes I do, but I am trying progress their relationship slowly. So, I really hope you stick with the story, because I got big plans! :)

itsi3 - I promise, chapter 17 I do finally get around to dropping Daryl's age, but as always you are very perceptive.

I own nothing except all the stuff that's original. ;)

**Chapter 13 - Daryl**

I woke up early, even for me.

You'd think I would sleep in a little since I had trouble getting to sleep last night. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I was excited.

I paced around my fire pit.

She was late.

_I should move it into my tent before she gets here. _

I strode over to the log I had leaned it against and grabbed it but didn't move toward my tent.

_What if she thinks I'm trying something if I ask her to take a look in my tent. Thats weird. That's a weird thing to ask. _

_You are such a pussy,_ came my brother's voice echoing from the back of my cranium.

I rubbed my face in my hand, pulling hard at the skin in aggravation.

_What the fuck am I doing? Why the fuck do I care?_

_I've never given a present before. _Came a small voice from some quiet place inside me I rarely visited.

_Shut the fuck up you piece of shit. It's not a present it's a supply. It's a tool that will make her more useful. That's all. It's practical._

_Then why not tell her about it. Supply runs aren't a surprise, presents are a surprise. _

_Shut the fuck up._

I sighed. Not only was I arguing with my self, I fuckin' lost a god damn argument with myself. People rise from the dead and giving someone a... tool, that's what turns me into a bat shit crazy loon who argues with voices in his head.

I walked behind the nearest tree on the far side of my tent from the direction she always came from and leaned it against the trunk.

To put a stop to my pacing I began gathering supplies for teaching her to make traps. Hatchet. Branches and twigs. Rags. Rope. Parachute cord. Fishing line.

I heard her approach but I didn't pause what I was doing. Didn't want her to hear that I was still and think I was waiting for her.

When she got closer I knew something was wrong. She wasn't taking the quiet, purposeful steps my ears had trained themselves to tune into. I knew the sound of her walk like I knew the sound of her voice, maybe better - neither of us were big talkers.

These foot steps were staggering with frequent pauses.

I rolled my eyes. Must be a geek.

I grabbed my crossbow, cocked it, and stalked off in the direction of the stumbling freak.

When it was just out of sight I stopped and took aim through my scope. The thing was hideous, covered in blood, face torn up and swollen.

It stopped when it saw me. Some thing was wrong, it's eyes were blue.

"Please, just kill me."

Geeks don't whisper.

"Carol?"

I wanted to throw up but there wasn't time. Blue was replaced by white as Carol's eyes rolled up in her head and she became dead weight in air. I rushed forward to catch her.

There she was in my arms, unrecognizable to her only friend in the world. Her beautiful pale skin was now purple and black and red and yellow and brown. Every color it's not supposed to be. Her perfectly shaped lips and chiseled cheek bones where swollen and misshapen. Blood crusted over the tears where the skin broke open from the force of his hits. Blood vessels had burst in her eyes filling the whites of her eyes with an angry red I'd come to associated with the eyes of the turned. And there, on her neck five long thin purple marks, one on the left, four on the right, where his hand wrapped around her neck and squeezed.

Afraid to cause her anymore pain I grabbed her wrist to check her pulse but the same five bruises where there too. He was everywhere. All over her. Her body told a story written in a language I was well versed in.

This story was written yesterday, made of bruises a half-day old. Had the other's seen them?

Before the world ended I would have taken her to the hospital, no way the other's saw these. They would have made her go see Hershel and say were she got them. I could tell none of this had been treated.

Why hadn't she come to me?

_Would you?_

I shut my eyes against the memory of a belt turned whip, lashes so deep they needed stitches they would never get and a little boy dragging himself to his secret hiding place until the pain subsided enough for sleep to claim him. In the morning he would to clean himself up.

_Never, not once, did I ever go to another living soul for help. _

I slipped my arms under her knees and back and lifted her, cradled in my arms.

I laid her down next to my fire pit and pulled my sleeping bag out of my tent. I laid it out beside her and then lifted her gentle onto it.

Then I got to kindling the fire. Put a pot of water to boil over and then went digging around in my saddle bags for my first aid kit.

Kneeling beside her I grimaced. She would have more injuries then just what I could see. Cuts could get infected if they didn't get cleaned up, I knew.

I chewed on my nail and decided to start with what I could see. I cleaned my hands as best I could and found my cleanest rags to sanitize in the boiling water.

When they were ready I started cleaning her wounds with the rags. Gently dabbing at the blood crusted along torn ridges of flesh. When the dirt and grime and blood was nothing but a memory - a memory that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life - I got out the alcohol and the gauze and dabbed the wounds. Then, I took a q-tip and swiped the open wounds with antibiotic ointment and bandaged them.

Taking a deep breath I watched my shaking hand and willed it steady. I didn't have time for any of the useless feelings that were welling up inside me. I had work to do.

I pulled up her shirt to reveal her stomach and rib cage but stopped before her chest. More bruises. Looked like she took some shots to the stomach and side. I felt her ribs. Nothing broken but I wasn't good enough to tell if they were cracked. There were scratches, little cuts from rocks and brush were he must have thrown her when he-

I stopped my brain right there. That wasn't helping my hand stay steady.

I repeated the same process I had performed on her face and then gently rolled her over to take care of her back.

I rolled up her sleeves as far as they would go and examined her arms.

I couldn't stop myself, I looked at her knuckles and under her fingernails. She didn't fight back.

In the four months I'd known her this was the worst I'd ever seen it. Wasn't the worse I'd ever seen but in a world without doctors he was playing with her life. The beatings were getting worse. He was gonna kill her and then he would be free to start all over again with the little one.

God her stupid fucking pride, if she would just tell everyone then this could stop. There was no way the kid was that stupid. Sophia knew what was going on. Kids always know. So what was it. Why did she let this go on?

_'Please, just kill me.'_

Her only words to me after dragging her half dead ass all the way to my camp.

"Fuck you."

I spat at her limp form.

"Fuck you!"

I wanted to scream.

I hated her.

"Stupid bitch."

I shot to my feet and started pacing.

"After all the work I've put into you? You asked me to teach you! You said we were friends. I've spent months training you up, making you useful and how do you repay me? Please, just kill me? FUCK YOU!"

I felt something hot and wet on my face and swiped it away viciously.

"You owe me! You don't get to ask me anymore favors. You owe me a life and I demand yours. I demand that you live. You don't get to op-ed out like Jenner and Jacqui. The price that I am exacting from you IS your life. You have to keep living. That's your punishment for being so weak. To live in this world... with me."

I was nearly insane with rage at this point. I hated her. I hated him. I stared in the direction of camp. Took a few steps forward. Stopped. Took a few steps more. Stopped.

I could kill him. End this right fucking now. Slit his throat while he slept.

_No, fuck that. He'd been torturing Carol for years. Why should he die quick?_

I could wake him up, give him a knife, make him fight for his life. Toy with him a little. Make him think he has a chance and then cut him apart. Death by a thousand cuts. Well, maybe 500 cuts. And then, when the hope has gone out of his eyes and he knows he can't win. I'll start taking pieces from him.

I'll take his hands first. The hands he beat her with. I'll have to cauterize the wound so he doesn't bleed out. Then I'm going to take his weapon away, the one between his legs. I want the last things he sees on this earth to be his the bleeding stump where is dick used to be, before I cut out his eyes. His eyes that looked at his own daughter with lust and soaked up her pain with sadistic pleasure. The last thing I'm gonna take is his tongue, so he can never say another disgusting thing to her. Have to save the tough for last, though, it'd be too hard not to kill him. Major artery in the tongue. Even if he doesn't bleed out he could choke on all that blood.

When I'm done, I'm going to pray. For the first time in my life, I am going to pray that the mother fucker lives. I pray he lives a long, miserable, dickless life. That was both their punishments. I wished long life on them both.

I took another step forward and I heard her take a shuddering breath. I closed my eyes and hung my head. My whole body was tense, fighting. Fighting to give into the rage and keep taking steps forward until I was at Peletier's tent.

"Fuck!" I spat. Turning around slowly I took shaky steps back to the fire like I was fighting gale force winds.

Anger was the only instinct I had. Fighting was the only thing I knew how to do to survive. Staying, sitting, waiting. These were not things I ever did.

Reaching the fire I dropped next to her head and listened to her ragged breaths as I stared into the flames.

_"Did you know that the ancient Chinese believed that if you save someone's life you were then responsible for them?"_Her words after the first time I saved her.

_Little book worm. _

I hung my head, defeated. The tension leaked out of my muscles and took with it all the energy I had for hating others. Suddenly I was exhausted, and only had enough in me to hate myself.

I hated myself for letting this weak, pathetic little girl weasel her way into becoming my problem.

Hated myself for fighting it.

Hated myself for standing by and doing nothing to help her just because no one helped me. Because Merle felt that suckers help the weak and the only way to not be a sucker was to look out for number one.

_"Did you know that the ancient Chinese believed that if you save someone's life you were then responsible for them?"_

"Fine, you wanna be my responsibility little girl, you got it. From now on I call the shots."

Her only reply was to keep breathing. That was o.k. For now, that was all I asked.

I reached out my hand slowly toward her head but it froze of its own accord, trembling slightly as it hovered over her. Taking a deep breath, my hand sunk that final inch to rest gently on the top of her head.

Taking another breath I began stroking her hair. Long, slow, even stokes. I was real young when my mama died but I always carried with me the impression of her stroking my hair. I don't know if I was sick or scared or hurt, hell I don't even know if it's real. Maybe I just made it up cause I needed one memory, one gentle or kind thing done onto me by my kin.

Either way, it was the only comfort I knew how to give.

I was gonna sit here and pet her hair and listen to her breath until she wakes up.

Then I was gonna do some yelling.


	14. Chapter 14 - Carol

mygnomefriend, DevilWithAnAngelHeart, lilytimes, itsi3, Jasmin Jade xx, shadowhundter89, hillaryn, DarkAngelShadow, Dakari Wolfe - thanks for the love, your reviews really are such a motivator for me.

I own nothing except all the original stuff.

**Chapter 14 - Carol**

I opened my eyes and I wished I hadn't. The sun glared down at me and I turned my head away, rolled over 'til I was face down in the dirt.

_Pathetic._

I'm more comfortable hiding in the dirt and my own shadow than I am in the sunshine.

I heard foot steps and I slid my eyes as far right as they can go to see Daryl's boots pacing. Straining my eyes that far right was uncomfortable. I'm surprised I even noticed. Everything hurt. Everything. Still, I closed my lids and let my eyeballs slide back forward.

_That's better. _

I heard his pacing stop and I wondered if he thinks I've gone back to sleep and I can avoid what's coming a little longer.

"I know you're still awake."

_Damn._

"I can tell by your breathing."

I rolled my eyes behind my closed lids.

My mind rolled over all sorts of sassy retorts I can send back his way, but there were only two words on my lips and I'm so tired I let them slip.

"I'm sorry."

I heard his steps come closer.

I felt his eyes on me and I knew he was trying to read me like I was just another set of tracks.

"You know at first it was just dumb luck. You would happen to come upon me in a bad way, and, whether you want to admit it or not, you're too good a person to leave me to my fate."

I felt a tear role down my cheek and I buried my face further into the dirt so that he wouldn't see. I'm sure he was repulsed enough by my confession without him seeing me blubber. I wished I could burry the words tumbling clumsily from my mouth as easily.

"Then it seemed like you weren't coming upon me when I was in trouble as much as you were coming FOR me.

"I got to relying on you, because I could, because you let me. I don't know why you let me. It wasn't pity, I'd know it if it was, I'd see it in your eyes and never speak to you again. It wasn't that you needed anything from me. You don't need anything from anyone. But, despite never understanding why, you were alway there.

"So then, so then I did the most selfish thing I ever done. The only thing I've ever been ashamed of. I came to you. Brought this all to you. Put this burden on you.

"I'm so sorry."

There was silence for a long time.

I heard him go into his tent, heard stuff getting moved around.

_Oh god, I've done it now. He's done with me. He's leaving, striking out on his own like he wanted to on the highway. _

Then I heard him coming back to me. Felt his hand gentle and hesitant on my shoulder and the side of my knee.

"Come'ere kiddo."

His voice was low like a whisper, husky even. I'd never heard him like that. My eyes opened of there own accord and my body was pulled around to face him, but not by Daryl's doing.

And there he was, eclipsing the sun, looking down at me. I searched his eyes as I did every time he saw a fresh bruise or a split lip. Every time I expected it and every time that expectation is disappointed. No pity.

His eyes burned with something but I couldn't tell what it was.

His arms slipped behind my knees and back and he lifted me up, cradled like a child.

My arms snaked around his neck and I let my head rest on his shoulder.

My eyes began to sink again and I didn't fight it.

_I'm with Daryl, it's was o.k. to let my guard down this once. _

When I woke up I was laid out on a blanket in a field.

We'd come across it on hunts and I'd always say how pretty it was and how I wished we still lived in a world were there were such things as picnics.

Daryl, ever the practical and productive one, was flenching new bolts for his crossbow, more than could even fit in his quiver.

"You snore like a lawnmower."

I gasped, "Do not!"

"Do too, I was afraid you was gonna bring down every geek in the damn state of Georgia on us."

I rolled over onto my side so that I was facing him, it was too much to ask my body to lean on my elbows at this point.

"You lie like a rug, I'd know if I snored, my father would never pass up an opportunity to criticize me."

Daryl winced visibly to that and I felt guilty for bring down the mood.

After a moment he said, "Listien..."

He grimaced then like there two directions this conversation could go and he wasn't sure which one he wanted to take.

"I know I said I'd teach you to build traps today, but we've got a surplus of food for the first time and I could go for a day off."

I smiled. He was an unusually kind person.

"Don't count fletching arrows as a day off," I said, swiping the arrow way from his hand. It was a meek gesture, weak and slow from the pain, but he let me do it anyway.

"That is why I snagged this here book out of that bag you keep at my camp. Felt wrong to read it without your permission, so I figured I should wait 'til you woke up."

"Very considerate of you," I said, rolling onto my back and tucking my hands behind my head. "What'd you grab?"

"Wizard of Oz," he said and I heard the spine creek open.

If it had been anyone else I would have flipped out, but it was him.

"That's a good one. One of my favorites. Used to belong to my mother."

He was silent, waiting to see if I had anything else to say. I didn't.

"Well, if there are no objections," he said as if he really didn't care one iota if there were, "I prefer readin' allowed. Help's me keep my place."

Again, I felt a smile play at my lips. An unusually kind man indeed.

For this one morning I wasn't Carol Peletier, I was a set of ears listening to the stumbling oration of a little girl's magical adventures after she leaves home. I was a set of eyes watching morphing clouds drift like sail boats in a sky blue ocean. I was a set of hands with no greater task than supporting the head they were cradling. I was a set of lungs pulling in deep steady breaths. I was a set of feet being tickled by the long grass after kicking free of their boots.

I was not greater than the sum of my parts, and at this moment, that as a terrible relief.


	15. Chapter 15 - Daryl

Tigerlily xoxo, shadowhunter89, DevilWithAnAngelHeart, bspooky3, DarkAngelShadow, and LaurnenEmilyxx - thanks for the 3

Tigerlily xoxo and shadowhunter89 - patience, all questions will be answered in time...

I own nothing but all the original stuff...

**Chapter 15 - Daryl**

I carried Carol back from the field to my camp. It disturbed me more than the bruises that she didn't fight it.

Any other day she would insist on walking on her own two feet, even to her own detriment. Girl was practically neurotic about being self sufficient.

_She can't hold out much longer. _

When I first realized what was going on, I was so shocked that he hadn't managed to break her. Now I think she just hid the cracks too well to see.

I looked up and at the canopy we had spent so many hours under, morning after morning. Branches and leaves scrolled passed my eyes. Occasionally the sun would breach a through a gap, stabbing down like spears and burning red and black splotches in my vision. I didn't look away, welcoming the pain, deserving it.

When the canopy closed in upon itself again I looked forward and waited for my vision to clear.

"Tell me what happened."

"You know what happened."

"All summer I've seen you show up in the morning with a fresh set of bruises or some injury that you try to hide. It's slowly getting worse but this is way beyond anything..." I was at a loss for words. Never was good with them anyway.

I looked down at the girl in my arms and realized she wasn't a 'girl' at all. She was some sort of hybrid between woman and child. She had a woman's body and a woman's burdens but when your never a kid you can't really grow up?Maybe she still believes that if she can just learn to be quiet enough and stay still long enough, the monster under the bed won't get her. Maybe she thinks it's her fault, that she deserves it.

"You wanna know why he put special effort in on this one? As if he needs a reason. Why don't you ask what you really want to know? What did I do to piss him off that much? How could even I fuck up that much?"

She was crying again, but this time they were angry tears. She was struggling and pushing at my chest violently. I was afraid she'd hurt herself so I put her down gently as possible, we were back at my camp anyway.

"Ain't nothing you could do ta deserve this. Nothin'."

I stared her down like I might a wild animal bearing it's teeth, made her decide if she was gonna bite back or back down. She chose the latter, stepping backward and collapsing on a log we used as a bench.

She got that faraway look she got the only other time I made her talk about it, in the rec room at the CDC.

"I saw you ride off alone. Rick and Shane just watched you go.

"King Shane said you probably decided to cut your losses and strike out on your own since you were the kinda person who would go hunting while Sophie and I were missing."

She looked at me then, real guilty like said, "Sorry 'bout that. People questionin' your character 'cause of a secret I make ya keep. Ain't right and it ain't fair."

I snorted. "Like I give a fuck what King Shane thinks'a my character."

That wasn't the consequence of my keeping her secrets that concerned me.

"Rick stood up for you. He's a fair minded man, Rick, but he still just watched you go. It made me mad to see it, he'd go after anyone else if they went off on their own, it wasn't fair and equal treatment and I said so."

I fought a losing battle with the smirk the was forming on my face. I couldn't help it, I was so damn proud of her. She was alway so fucking meek around the others, it was about time she flew her rebel flag for the others to see.

"Whad they have to say ta'that?"

She choked out a laugh, "nothin', they was dumb struck."

She looked away then, that faraway look enveloping her like a veil.

"You're always saying I need to pay better attention to ma surroundings," she smiled at that, but it was grotesque, twisted thing. "I didn't see him coming, didn't even realize he was awake, must be building a tolerance to them drugs we've been give 'im."

I knew who "him" was.

"What in the hell did I just hear come outchyour damn mouth?"

It was an abomination to here Ed's words come from her mouth. It hurt to hear.

"What did I tell you about speaking disrespectfully to your betters, to men?"

She sniffed hard but the tears were gone.

"Dragged me off to where the others couldn't see..."

"You want the ugly details," she spat whipping her head around and fixing me with an iron stare.

"Rick and Shane just watched him drag you off?"

"Rick tried to help, which only made things worse."

I cocked my eyebrow at her trying my damnedest to contain my rising anger, "What'chu' mean tried?"

"Well, Rick's got a little more on his plait right now than just breaking up a domestic disturbance. Just as Ed was draggin' me off Glenn ran up to him with news that could NOT wait."

I just looked at her, my breaths getting heavy. It sounded like a rotten excuse to me. What could possibly be THAT important?

"You didn't get back until late yesterday and you never touched base with main camp, but it never even occurred to me you didn't know..."

"Know what?" I said very slowly and deliberately. My hand was shaking now. I could feel my control slipping.

"I couldn't go back to camp, looking like I did, so I stayed out in the woods, but I could hear the yelling, even from there. There's geeks in the ba-"

She was cut off by the sound of gunfire. A lot of gunfire.

_HOLY FUCK! That's coming from camp! _

I stood and took a step forward, then looked back at Carol. She was struggling up.

I couldn't take the time to carry her. I looked back to toward camp where the shots were coming from. Back to her.

"Go!" she yelled. "I'm right behind you."

I nodded and took off at a sprint, pulling my crossbow off my back and cocking it as I ran.


	16. Chapter 16 - Carol

HermineandMarcus, itricky, themilitarygirl44, DevilWithAnAngelHeart, hillaryn, HaloHunter89, Tigerlily xoxo, Jasmin Jade xx, itsi3 - Thanks so much for the love! I didn't mean to leave you on a cliff hanger for so long. I was on vacation and off the grid for the last week.

WARNING - This chapter contains graphic and adult content. I was really pushing the limits of what I feel comfortable with here folks so let me know what you think...

I only own the original plot stuff...

**Chapter 16 - Carol**

It sounded like a war zone, endless gunfire. I'd never heard such a cacophony, even the night the camp was attacked -

Holy mother of god I was in pain.

Every step sent a new shock wave like an earth quake.

_Sophia._

The thought of what all that gunfire could mean and her being all alone, frightened and in danger drove me forward, step after agonizing step. I was breathing heavy and fighting blackouts just from my limping pace.

_Pa sure did a number on me this time._

It seemed to take forever, but the source of the gunfire finally came into view: the barn.

_The geeks must have gotten out. But how?_

That train of thought cut off abruptly when I realized the whole group was there, even Hershel and his family, but no Sophie... and no Pa.

My blood ran cold and my brain quickly sorted through all the possibilities, hideous mental flash-bombs that assaulted my brain. I closed my eyes to brace my self against the barrage but that only intensified the images. Suddenly my eyes snapped open staring blindly, filled only with sight of Pa's favorite place to drag me.

_The stables._

Intuition told me I was right and the horror of it was too much for me to bare. I felt the old switch being turned on as my brain dissociated itself from emotions and pain.

I was coughing and spitting up blood as I ran but having gone numb I just pushed myself harder. Absently, in some distant corner of my consciousness I realized Daryl must be right about those broken ribs, but I didn't have time to worry about myself.

I had to reach the stables before... before... I couldn't bare to finish the thought.

Crashing passed the threshold of the stables I froze, just for a spilt second, not even the length of a breath.

_No._

He was on top of her.

_No. _

I could see her screaming but all I could hear was gun shots. Sophie was struggling, fighting. She scratched his face. He broke her wrist.

_No! NO! NO!_

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

I unfroze.

All the emotions I'd put a lock on since I was 11 years old came crashing down on me like a dam had burst.

I charged as fast as my broken body could carry me, ramming in to him with enough force that I felt my cracked ribs break. I managed little else though. I bounced right off him and hit the ground hard.

Suddenly it was very hard to breath and my vision started going black.

It didn't matter though, I had gotten his attention. He was on me then.

"Didn't I leave you for dead?" spat Ed, from above me.

"Sophia! Run!" the scream ripped from my throat but she must have been in shock. She was crying and kept trying to pull her torn shirt together with her one good hand so she wasn't exposed to the world.

"Sophia wants to spend some quality time with daddy," said Ed, making my skin crawl. He leaned down and licked up the side of my face. "Your all used up. Your old and ugly and I'm tired of looking at you."

His hand wrapped around my throat and squeezed.

I felt the old mechanism kick in. I started shutting down, waiting for it to be over, hoping he killed me this time.

"Sophia? Now, she is young and tight, virgin territory," I felt him harden and my eyes widened in terror.

_I have to fight. I can't shut down. For Sophie, I have to fight._

"Remember when I took your virginity? Your momma done gone and killed herself, crazy bitch, and left you and I alone to play together. Now look at'cha, you been had so many damn times I bet I could fit my whole fist up there. Let's find out."

He ripped my jeans down so hard they took the skin off my hip bones. I struggled reaching for my pants.

Suddenly Sophie was on his back she bit into his neck so hard he bled and she pounded her ineffectual fists against his shoulders. He leaned up long enough to elbow her in face, breaking her nose and throwing her to the ground.

That was all I needed. My anger piked and my adrenalin with it, subduing my pain enough for me to snap my body up, despite two broken ribs. I shoved my hand into my pocked that was now by my ankle and my back hit the ground again just as he returned his attention to me.

With no more warning that his manic smile he forced himself between my legs and shoved his fist inside me.

I didn't think I was capable of feeling any more pain but I was wrong. He had torn me open, ruined what ever was left of me.

He was panting now, his erection hard like a blade. He lowered himself to whisper in my ear, "I guess I can through you own last pity fuck for old times sake. That way I can last a good long while inside of Sophia's tight pussy. I'm gonna fuck her little brains out. But first-"

He ripped his fisted hand out of me and my mouth formed in a silent scream.

His blood covered hand went to release his weapon from his sheath, and I released mine, flipping open my buck knife.

He slammed himself into me hard, intending to cause as much pain as he could and groaned in pleasure.

"Your right I said," and he looked down at me confused. I never spoke, never reacted. "This IS the last time."

I slipped my arm around his neck and held him as tight against me as I could before slipping my blade into his side. He roared up in pain but I held on, pulling my knife out and plunging it back in.

"How does it feel to be penetrated by your own kin?" I spat in his ear, stabbing him again.

He broke free of me and wrapped his hands around my neck and squeeze.

_God please let us kill each other._

I fought the black out that was coming. I didn't care if I lived, only that he died. I kept stabbing his side again and again and again.

His fluids poured out over my stomach and my hand became sticky with his blood and fluids.

He died flaccid and inside me before collapsing on top of me. His dead weight too much for me to push off. Didn't matter anymore, my vision had gone black and conscious thought was slipping away.

I prayed never to wake up.


	17. Chapter 17 - Daryl

Tigerlily xoxo, YouthINaisa6, Sorry-I-Wasn't-Listening, mygnomefriend, HaloHunter89, AffairWithACrossbow, Summers Rage, crystal2817, Jasmin Jade xx, lillytimes, itsi3, Team-Sooric-Delena - Thanks for the support and feedback. That last chapter was tough and extremely uncomfortable to write. I hope in the end you all feel that the intensely graphic nature of the chapter was necessary as you see the story unfold.

WARNING - This chapter contains graphic violence and adult themes.

I only own the plot lines that are original.

**Chapter 17 - Daryl**

When the last geek dropped I lowered the shot gun Shane had tossed me.

_What a fucking mess. How did this happen? How did they get out? Why were they in there?_

I looked around. Looked for Carol. I'm not sure when it happened, but seems she was the always the first thing I looked for whenever something bad happened and the smoke cleared, whenever I went up to camp or came back from a run. Hell if someone just says something I steal a peek at her to see what her reactions was. Sure enough her eyes would be there, looking back, speakin' volumes.

_Not this time thought._

I saw Hershel on his knees hands over his mouth. That Maggie girl was standin' beside him, head turned away from the mounds of corpses. Her kid sister was sobbing in that kid Jimmy's arms.

The older woman, Otis' widow, stood a few feet away looking dazed and defeated.

Skeletor was holding Carl on the ground while shooting Rick a look that said, 'what the fuck?'

Andrea looked stricken and Dale only has eyes for King Shane, his face marred with loathing.

Just then the little blonde daughter broke free of her man and ran toward the dead bodies crying about "mom, mom." She pulled a downed geek off what used to be a woman. The girl knelt by her head crying before the geek burst to "life" and grabbed her. Everyone leaped forward to separate the two. T-dog started stomping on her skull but she kept comin.' Andrea kept her head about her and ran for a scythe and drove it through the creatures head.

We all stood around staring at each other for a minute, then Hershel and his family started back for the house, supporting each other like they was injured.

Rick, King Shane and Glenn went after them.

That's when I saw Sophia. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and I turned to see Sophie stumble out of the stables. I mistook her for a geek at first. She had blood stains pouring down from her mouth and her nose and she was cradling her right wrist. I saw her stumble and fall.

I bolted yelling for help as I went, maybe for the fist time in my life.

I heard footfalls behind me and I saw Rick look up from his argument with Shane and dash over to fall in line with me.

I dropped to the ground so fast when I reached Sophie momentum almost slid me passed her.

"Holy shit Soph, what happened?"

My hands hovered above her afraid to touch her, cause her anymore pain.

Her lips moved weakly but nothing came out.

"What?" I whispered, terrified, leaning down so my ear was practically at her lips.

I could only make out four words.

"Carol. Ed. Dead. Stables."

I shot up and saw Rick and Andrea staring back at me.

"Andrea, go, run and tell Hershel to get all his medical shit ready. Rick carry Sophia back to the house as carefully as you can."

I didn't give them a chance to question. I was on my feet and passing the threshold into the barn as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I need to get them away and know that Sophia would be taken care of in equal parts. Their retreating footfalls confirmed that they were doing as I asked.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the barn, and when they did I threw up.

Ed, his pants around his knees was on top of my Carol, motionless and pale with death.

I saw red and rushed to her, ripping his limp weight from her tiny form.

_Oh god. Oh god. Oh god._

I felt the tears forming in my eyes and I fought them for control.

_Don't lose it now!_

"Carol? Please don't be dead," I knelt by her and touched her cheek. Cold. "Fuck, woman, I need you to wake the fuck up! Now!"

I started stroking her hair. "Please, please be alive."

I swallowed the lump in my throat and reached for her bruised neck. My middle and index finger trembled above where her plus should be. I sucked in a breath and pressed down into her flesh, creating a hole like a crater. I felt a thumping press back against my finger tips, weak but definitely there. I let out my breath like a sob.

"O.k. baby, it's o.k., I'm here, I got you."

Took in the state of her body. She looked so broken I was afraid to touch her. Her pants were hooked around an ankle andI knew I should cover her but there was so much blood, I was afraid of doing more damage if I pulled her pants up. I heard the others comin' and I knew I needed to act fast. Her dignity meant so much to her, I couldn't let them see her torn up and exposed to the world like she was. I searched around frantic and found a horse blanket. Running back to her side I wrapped her up in it and gently cradled her in my arms and lifted her from the ground.

I saw Glenn and Dale running up now, well, Glenn at least was runnin'. "Go tell Hershel he's got a second patient coming and she is probably gonna need surgery.

Glenn nodded and turned on his heal to dash back to the house.

"Stay with me baby girl. I need you to keep breathing, that's all, just keep breathing, it's all gonna be o.k. I promise if you keep breathing I wont ever let anything like this happen to you again. I swear. Just... just don't die."

I silenced my pleas and hardened my face as Dale came into ear shot.

"My god! What happened?" he asked, removing his hat as if a funeral procession was passing.

That pissed me off, she wasn't dead and she wasn't going to be anytime soon. I won't let her.

"Seems that questions been going around a lot today." I said, dead pan. He stopped. I kept going.

When I reached the house Hershel had a bed waiting for her. I laid her down and backed out of the room as Hershel and Patricia were a flurry of activity around her. I saw Sophia in the parlor, she was all patched up, Andrea sitting next to her her.

"She's gone catatonic," said Andrea looking up at me. "I think she's in shock. What happened?"

I just shook my head and headed back outside to the stables. Everyone seemed to be comparing notes or staring at each other in confusion. I passed them all without a word but put on a face I'd spent 27 years perfecting. It said: 'don't fucking follow me.'

I stormed to the stables and dropped to my haunches beside Ed's corpse. His body twisted in strange ways from having been hurled off his little girl. I felt the bile rise in my throat at the memory but I suppressed it. I was done with weakness.

I examined his remains the way homicide cops do on TV shows. I also searched the marks left behind on the dirt floor of the stables. They spoke to me. All tracking is story telling in the end. This was the worst tale I have ever read.

I saw Ed drag Sophia here. I saw her fight and I saw her fall. I saw Ed come down on top of her. I saw Carol burst onto the scene, stop, then charge Ed. She was so small and in her condition no match for Ed. She must have known it, but she was doing what she always did, sacrificing herself for her sister. I saw all the blood where she lay. Sophia's little foot steps came at them from behind before her body hit the ground some distance away. I looked at Ed's body and saw the bite mark on his neck for the first time. The blood on Sophia's mouth made sense now and I nodded my head in respect for the little girl's bravery. This was the story of two sister desperate to save each other, risking everything, paying any price.

Shame threatened to overwhelm me. I had failed my only friends in the world. I should have been there. This should never have happened. Nothing like this will ever happen again. This whole secret friendship is over. Secrets get you killed... or worse.

Just then something in the dirt caught the light and I moved toward it. There, where blood had turned the dirt to mud, lay Merle's buck knife. The one I had given her before I left for Atlanta to go find my brother. The one she kept with her always. I pulled the rag from my back pocket and rubbed the blade and handle 'til they shined, then I folded it carefully and slipped it into my pocket.

Knowing that she had killed the monster with the blade I had given her, with the blade Merle never used on my father to save me made me shake with an emotion I couldn't identify. Maybe there were too many to distinguish just one. Knowing that she kept it with her always but was too far gone after today to hold onto it only added fuel to the fire.

The feelings coursing through me were like too many colors blending, no matter what they looked like alone, together they were a muddy brown, an ugly thing.

A rasping breath filled the room like a scream and my eyes found Ed's just as his found me. Well, not really Ed's eye's anymore, they were a geek's eyes and I didn't stop to question, I just smiled. I wasn't there to kill Ed the first time but at least, in some small way I would get to kill him the last time. Not when it mattered most but right now I needed to kill something and I couldn't think of anything I'd rather take my rage out on then Ed's reanimated corpse.

I moved, like a cord inside me had snapped, my boot heal came down on his head before he so much as raised it.

The sickening crunch of his skull caving in soothed me like a lullaby. I stopped down again and his brain popped like a zit, splattering my pants and coating my boots.

_That's right baby brother, give yourself over to that anger, like a man, like a Dixon. _

I didn't care that Merle's advice was never no good. I let him rile my up like a twisted cheerleader and was grateful for it.

I stomped Ed's skull again and again 'til his brain was turning liquid. Stepping back with panting breaths I looked down at the disgusting man and realized I wasn't done. I brought my boot down on his cock and looked down at the partially severed, flaccid little thing. Then I kept going, I couldn't stop, I didn't want to. It was long after there was nothing left of his supposed manhood and I had broken his pelvic bone in my need to obliterate the weapons he had used to hurt my friend that I finally stumbled back from his sack of bone.

_The hand,_ whispered Merle, _look at his blood covered hand. Her pussy was torn up somethin' fierce and you know his little prick couldn't have done all that damage. Doesn't take a genius to put two and two together. _

"Shut the fuck up Merle, don't you talk about her like that. Don't you talk about her ever!"

I was too consumed in rage to care that I was arguing with a voice inside my own head. I pulled my hunting knife from it's sheath and started hacking away at Ed's blood covered hand. Bone and sinew burst apart with each chop and I felt blood splatter my face but I kept going until his hand was unrecognizable except as fish chum. When I was done I stumbled to my feet and looked down at my handiwork.

Headless, cock-less, deformed and defaced. It was a revolting sight, but less disgusting than the man had been in life, and I in regards to him, I was using the term man loosely.

My anger spent, I grabbed his pants and pulled them up over his broken pelvis. The others may suspect what happened here today but they wouldn't learn it from me and I wasn't about to let this dead man tell any tales.

He got bit, bite mark on his neck to prove it. I put him down. End of story.

If I read the signs right, the others would learn soon enough that in the end we all turn. Only thing a bite from a geek does is kill you. That wasn't today's story, though, couldn't be today's story. I had failed Carol in every way imaginable, I wouldn't be the one to out her secret.

I slung Ed's fat carcass over my shoulder and walked him to the truck were the others were loading up the geeks from the barn. Dumping his body on the pile of monsters I fixed Dale and then T-dog with hard stare.

"We burn his body with the other geeks."

The fact that no one questioned it spoke volumes to how deep there suspicions went. It might have pissed me off that they were so certain he was such a bastard and yet none of them lifted a finger to help her, but I'd exhausted my ability to feel... anything, at least for today.

So, I helped load up the truck with downed geeks.

Andrea came over to us from where she, King Shane, Skeletor and that kid Jimmy had been digging graves for Hershel's geek family.

"We're ready over there," she said simply, smudging dirt on her brow as she wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

"Alright, well, let's at least get these bodies out of here before the ceremony," said T-dog heading for the truck.

Andrea nodded, "I'll go with you," she said hoping on the truck's tailgate.

Rick and Dale headed back towards camp. I didn't.

I felt their wondering glances but I ignored them as I made my way to the house. Fuck them anyhow, I didn't need to explain myself to anyone, anyone but her.

As I passed into the house I saw Sophia sitting on the couch, staring into space. She hadn't moved an inch since I left. I took a step forward but stopped. Little girl needed her sister. What the hell good could I do her. I was no better with kids than I was with words.

_She's no more a kid than you were at that age._

I wasn't sure where that came from, certainly wasn't something Merle would say.

I lowered myself to the floor and leaned against the couch next to where she sat.

Staring off into the same distant point she was focused on, I spoke, unsure if she could hear me or if she even cared to listening.

"I saw what happened. Well, I didn't SEE IT, but the tracks told me. What you did was very brave. You should be proud, you both should. You where up against someone bigger and stronger than you but you didn't give up, you fought with everything you had. You had each others backs and even though at any point one of you could have run and saved yourselves, you didn't. You kept fighting and you survived. Your a survivor Sophia, and so is your sister. I really respect what you did. You got nothing to be ashamed of. We all of us got a darkness in us, of some sort or another, don't let it be all you are."

That might have been the most I ever said all at once. I glanced back at her. She hadn't moved or even blinked, just stared off like she was made of stone.

I lifted myself off the ground. Shoulda known better than to try to help. Fuck up like me could only make things worse.

"Thank you."

I spun around but Sophia was still motionless. The words had been spoken in a whisper so faint they could have been a breath. I must have imagined it. Turning back I left the room without another word to find the only person who could help Sophia, her sister.

I came up on the room that I had carried her to but I heard voices so I stopped.

"Welcome back."

It was Hershel's voice. She was awake.

_Thank fucking god._

"Do you remember what happened to you?"

I couldn't hear her response. I should walk away, this was eavesdropping but I was rooted in place.

"Now I'm no gynecologist, or even a surgeon, but I did the best that I could for you. Your vagina was torn apart. The flesh was so shredded I had to cut parts away so that it was even feasible to stitch you up."

Hershel sounded detached, defeated, dead inside. The slaughter at the barn had taken some essential part of him. Whatever solid ground he had planted the feet of his character in had crumbled.

"For the sake of your life there can be absolutely no penetration for at least five weeks, two months to be safe. Now, I can only imagine that this is the last thing you want to think about but you need to be prepared. You will be much smaller - down there, if you do ever, if there is ever penetration again... I believe there will be some pain - much like the pain women experience their first time."

What the fuck was he telling her this shit for? Ed was dead, I wasn't gonna let anyone touch her ever again. She didn't have to worry about that anymore.

"I'm not telling you this to scare you. I know you don't want to say you did this to you child, but I want to make sure you understand the consequences if you don't let anyone help you and this happens again."

If she made any response I couldn't hear it. After a moment Hershel continued.

"I wish I could tell you what to expect as regards to your ability to have children but I have to assume based on the amount of damage I saw that your uterus was also damaged. Unfortunately I don't have the equipment necessary to check nor the expertise to know the significance of what I saw.

"I know I've burdened you with a lot right now but if there is one thing I want you to take away from our talk it is that even though I am just a veterinarian, I will honor doctor-patient confidentiality. I have to say though, one last time: Child, if you don't tell someone what is happening to you, or at least who is doing this to you, you wont survive another one of these attacks."

I heard Hershel moving toward the door and I ducked through a nearby entry way. When he was gone I slipped into her room.

"They're gonna have a service for Hershel's family that was in the barn. Did you wanna come out side."

She stiffened when she heard my voice but she didn't look at me, just shook her head no.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, unsure what to say.

"Do you want me to bring Sophia in here to keep you company while we're at the service?"

She shook her head.

I grimaced. She had said more than once that we were friends but it still scared the crap out of me to put myself out there.

"I could stay with you."

She was very still for a few breaths but then shook her head, no. Rejection crushed me and I fled from the room like the coward I was. I had failed her one too many times.

_Why would she ever want me to be anywhere near her?_

I stalked off to the ceremony for people I'd never met and didn't feel guilty about putting down.

_Not like I have anything better to do..._


	18. Chapter 18 - Daryl

Ivy, DevilWIthAnAngelHeart, julie, Jasmin Jade xx, lillytimes, hillaryn, AffairWithACrossbow, itsi3 - Thanks so much for the love an support. :)

I only own the original plot narratives... and characters...

**Chapter 18 - Daryl**

After the ceremony everyone went their separate ways. I retreated back into my woods, but I'd spent too many mornings with Carol passing between these oaks and pines on well tread paths. Too much reminded me of her. I kept seeing her face. Her face as she left my camp yesterday morning, glowing, happy... beautiful.

Her face this morning, bruised, broken, misshapen, and torn up... ready to die.

Her face as she rejected me.

I huffed and stomped back to my camp. I needed to kill something. I was gonna get my shit and -

I stopped dead in my tracks. My non-present for Carol was still just where I left it, leaning against the far side of a tree, facing away from my camp. I dropped down before it, kneeling like a sinner before a cross.

I pulled at my hair and felt a whimper escape before I could stuff it down.

I felt like I had when Rick told me they abandoned my brother in Atlanta. Desperate, alone, having failed the one person I had in this world.

I wished I could un-hear what Hershel had said to Carol.

His words assaulted me.

Torn apart. Shredded. Damaged.

I tortured myself with them. Repeating them over and over and over. I never wanted to forget the cost of my inaction. I wanted to feel the burden of this everyday for the rest of my life - However long that was.

He said she might never be able to have kids. He said she should tell someone to make it stop, but I knew and what did I do?

Respected her privacy?

I lowered my forehead into the dirt and buried my head under my arms.

She's 18 fucking years old? She's a kid. What the fuck does she know? She should be taken care of by adults not left to handle shit like that on her own unless she asks for help. I'm 27, what the fuck is the point of being older if you can't be wiser?

I hated myself.

_Pull yourself together you fucking pussy. _

Merle. I ignored him.

_I'm sorry, I didn't realize squealing and rolling around in the mud like fucking swine was helping your little woman. That is what you've got your panties in a bunch about isn't it? Why don't you give her you're dorky little present?_

_It's not a present, _I snapped back. I really needed to stop arguing with myself or they were gonna have to commit me.

I sighed and pushed myself off the ground looking back at the... equipment I had gotten for Carol. Maybe if I brought it to her it would remind her of Morning Carol. What she was like when it's just us and the hunt.

I felt pathetic but Merle was uncharacteristically silent on the subject. I grabbed her... tool and headed back for the Greene house.

As I approached I saw Rick, King Shane, Andrea and Skeletor rushing to the Greene house. Well, that can't be good. No one rushed in this heat unless something was the matter.

_I'm sure I'll find out sooner or later if it's worth knowin' about. _

When I enter the house I hear them all talking upstairs but I go right into the room to the left where Carol go patched up.

She was gone.

My heart started pounding. I dropped her present to the floor and flew out of the room. Sophia was still in the same spot I left her staring at the same spot on the wall.

"Sophia?"

I knelt in front of her but she didn't look at me.

I went to grab her shoulders but stopped myself, letting my hands hover.

"Sophia, where is Carol?"

"She left," whispered a ghost from the mouth of a little girl.

"When?"

"When you were all putting those bodies in the ground."

"Do you know where she went?"

No answer, the girl had retreated back into herself. Whether she knew or not didn't matter cause I wasn't gonna find out from her.

I spun on my heal taking the stairs three at a time.

They all stopped talking when they heard me coming and I was greeted at the doorway by their stares.

"Sophia just told me Carol left during the ceremony, anybody know anythin' 'bout that?"

They all looked at each other and then at Rick who was glaring at his boots. Lifting his face toward the ceiling, or maybe to god, he released a heavy sigh.

"Shit," he said. "Hershel is missing too. Glenn and I were just about to check out the local bar, see if we could find him."

He looked at me now.

"If Sophia was right about when she left, then they didn't leave together. I hate to ask this of anyone but the chances of her being found alive would be a lot better if a second pair when out looking for her."

"Man, you want to risk more lives, spread us even thinner, separate our most capable people from each other AND the group that needs us to protect them. For what, for some girl who left of her own free will and does not have any discernible skills of fucking value?" exploded Shane.

I really wanted to break his jaw but there would be plenty of time for that later.

"I'll go," I said.

Shane turned his contempt on me, "you went hunting the first time she was missing, why are you such a team player all of a sudden?"

"'Cause fuck you, that's why," I spat.

_Ain't none of his damn business why I do what I do. _

"Shut up both of you," snapped Rick. "No one is going anywhere alone so unless someone else volunteers it's a moot point."

Shane crossed his arms in victory. He sure as hell wasn't going to risk his fucking neck. He never went on a single supply run to Atlanta neither.

I was about to ask Rick exactly who was planning to stop me from tracking Carol down on my own when Andrea piped up.

"I'm in too," she said, giving Shane an incredulous look.

"Oh really, you're going to go with him? That - That's just great," snarled Shane before storming out of the room.

I was shocked too, I didn't think anyone else in the group cared enough about Carol to risk their life for her.

_Andrea, welcome to my good side._

Everything seemed settled but then Skeletor grabbed Rick, "are we gonna have a conversation about this before you-"

I didn't have time for this. I met Andrea's eye and jerked my head toward the door. She nodded and I headed out of the room feeling far more loyalty to this group than I had felt walking into it. Well, at least to Rick, Glenn and Andrea. I was sure that if Hershel wasn't missing too Rick and Glenn would have gone after Carol as well.

First stop was the RV for some fucking fire power.

Dale was at his usual post atop the RV. Andrea filled him in while I went for the guns. I grabbed Andrea's Smith and Wesson and my snubnosed Colt. When I exited the RV, Dale had climbed down and was speaking in hushed tones with Andrea. They looked up when they heard me come out. Dale gave me a nod, the sort of nod that one man gives another when he respects what he'd about to do.

_That's weird._

I returned the nod, gave Andrea a look that said 'let's go,' and turned toward the truck.

"Here take this," I heard Dale say.

"Dale I cant."

"Yes, you can and for the love of God... just... come back alive."

I climbed behind the wheel and looked over when Andrea slung in though the passenger side door. She was holding Dale's Remington 700. Good. The scope was accurate and from what I heard she was a decent shot.

I turned the key and the old Ford F-100 rumbled to life. I pulled the truck onto the dirt drive and headed for the road.

"Where do we even start?" asked Andrea.

"Back to the highway."

"Do you think she's trying to pickup where we left off and head South to Fort Benning?"

I shook my head. "North."

"North, that doesn't make any sense. That's where we were running from. North is Atlanta, and, more importantly, the direction the herd was going in. Why would she go North?"

I didn't answer.

_"My only option was to never give him a reason to go after her. She's 11, I just had to survive seven more years and then we could both leave. I could make sure she made a life for herself as far away from him as the world would allow. After that, after she was safe and o.k., I was thinking I could kill myself. Maybe him too."_

Carol's words from the floor of the Rec. room in the CDC echoed through the empty hallways of my mind.

"Daryl?" asked Andrea.

"Chalk it up to intuition."

"You're risking your life, my life and her life on a hunch, something you're not even sure about?"

Carol's words wouldn't stop replaying in my head.

_"After that, after she was safe and o.k., I was thinking I could kill myself. Maybe him too."_

"I'm sure," I growled, gripping the steering wheel tighter.

"How?"

_"I was thinking I could kill myself. Maybe him too."_

"Because Ed is dead." I said.

"I don't understand."

"Just trust me," I growled as I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.

To my surprise, she did.

_"I was thinking I could kill myself."_

Carol's words were fading, I heard her hollow voice like whisper one last time, then I pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

_She better fucking not._

We rode in silence 'til the sun was at its zenith in the sky. I heard Andrea digging around in the glove box. I heard her open something and looked over to see her the crack a plastic case of a cassette tape. She popped it in the tape deck and I was surprised to hear a familiar voice.

"Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."

I felt my eye brows raise as I gave Andrea a side long glance. I always took Andrea for a hoity-toity college educated yankee bitch too above-it-all to listen to Cash.

She tapped her hand on the side of truck along to the bass line as Johnny sang about every kind of sinner there ever was. Live at Folsom Prison was one of Merle and my favorite records growing up. I guess we could relate. A fair few of the songs were adapted from the music of mountain people. My mother's father's people were from the Appalachians. I still remember when I was real young my grandpappy telling me of the mountain people before their land was robbed by the coal mining companies, their trust was betrayed by the government and their pride was smoked out by methamphetamine.

My reveries were interrupted by the sight of a car at the side of the road.

I pointed and Andrea confirmed.

"That's Maggie's car!" she gasped, jumping up to attention in excitement. "You were right! She did go north!"

"I'd think you'd be used to me being right by now," I said. It was a joke, kind of. She took it in kind though and smiled with a roll of her eyes.

I stopped the truck next to Maggie's Tan Mercury Sable. Andrea hopped out an investigated. I watched her look through the car, drop into the drivers seat and try to turn the car over. It wouldn't start.

I whistled for her when I saw geeks stumble out of the tree line. She looked around and ran for the truck. Her ass was barely in the seat when I sped off.

"She must have run out of gas. I'm no tracker but there are some pretty clear foot prints in the dirt beside the highway. Looks like she continued north on foot. And Daryl, there was blood on the seat. She must have torn her stitches open. She'll be walker bait and even if we get her back alive, she might not stay that way if Rick and Glenn and Rick don't find Hershel in one piece.

I nodded but said nothing. No sense worrying about things outside of our control. Bringing Carol back alive was our job. I just had to trust Rick and Glenn to do their job.

We sped along until we came across the first exit ramp. I stopped and got out this time. Andrea slid over into the driver's seat and let the old Ford crawl along behind me.

It took a moment to find her tracks but the shape of her foot prints were as familiar to me as the curves of her face and called to me from the din of tire, animal and geek tracks.

She followed this exit off the highway, maybe hoping it led to a town with gas.

_Or geeks._

I nodded my head knowing as horrible as it was that it was also real fucking likely. I followed her foot prints until she stepped onto the road and it was impossible to track her any farther.

I ran back to the truck and hurled myself through passenger side door.

"Lets go!"

Andrea stepped on it and the we found ourselves coming up on a road that ran east-west.

"That way," I said pointing east.

She whipped through the left turn so fast we started to power slide before the tires found traction again.

She didn't question me this time which for whatever reason made me more inclined to answer the question I knew was on her mind.

"When they're lost, children almost always walk with sun at their back. Sun's more than half way through the sky, so heading east would put the sun at her back."

I knew it was a stretch but we didn't have much else to go on and we had to start somewhere since she left the side of the road. Maybe she did it on purpose because she thought I might come after her...

It felt like electricity was coursing through my skin and I was about ready to tear it off. I started chewing on my nail as I scoped out the area. We were coming into the center of a town. There was a pretty dense pack of geeks coming together maybe a hundred yards ahead and the point they were all gravitating toward was Carol.

She was stumbling and spinning around trying to fend off the geeks with a piece of ply wood she must have picked up. Whether she wanted to die or not her instincts wouldn't let her go down without a fight. Maybe she just figured she's take as many geeks down with her as she could.

I jumped out of the truck.

"You can't plow through that thick of a mob with the truck. I'm going in after her. Take a parallel road and meet us on the other end of the block. I doubt we'll be able to get out the same way I came."

She nodded and sped off without argument. I was liking that woman more and more. I slung my cross bow over my shoulder, tucked my colt in my belt and pulled out my K-bar before running into the growing mass of geeks.

I took the ones I passed from behind, plunging my knife into the soft space where the neck met the back of the skull, never slowing my pace. The closer I got the thicker the geeks got. I only had to take down three in the first forty yards. Eleven in the next forty. I had to fight the urge to use my crossbow or colt, I'd need them to get out.

My arms were coated up to my shoulder in geek gore and I was twenty yards from her now, but the last ten were impassable. The geeks were shoulder to shoulder. Panic started to creep in but then I saw an old Cadillac like a bridge to her, it's hood ended not two feet from where she fought.

I charge through the next ten yards like a linebacker, not bothering to take the geeks down, just knocking them out of the way. I leapt onto to trunk of the cadi ran over the roof and jumped off the hood bringing my knife down on the cranium of a geek as it was about to plunge its teeth into the back of her shoulder.

I pulled out my gun and opened a whole in the crowed with five well aimed shots with my colt.

I grabbed her hand, "Carol let go!"

I pulled her through the thickest part of the mob but shock must have been the only reason she let me drag her along because she started fighting me.

"No!" she screamed and started tugging her wrist from my grasp.

The geeks were closing in fast and we did not have time for hysterics.

I spun around to face her.

"I'm sorry," I said.

She stopped struggling for a moment and looked at me. Just long enough for me to slam my fist into her stomach, and then elbow her on the back of the head when she doubled over.

I knew I would never forgive myself for layin' hands on that girl after all she'd been through, but it was that or we both die, 'cause I sure as hell wasn't leavin' her.

I should have known I had bigger problems then guilt. As I straightened up after throwing her limp form over my shoulder I heard a trigger cock.

"Hand the girl over."

The voice was husky and low, but definitely a woman's.

"Over my dead body," spat.

"That can be arranged," said the woman.

I turned around to see a woman about my age with silvery white hair and an accent that told me she was from way north of the Mason-Dixon line. Beside her stood a man with West-Indian features but an accent to match her's. They must have come from the alley behind them.

_I should have thought of that. _

"Amelia?"

"Yes, Daniel?"

"Maybe we can discuss this at a safer distance."

Just then a geek lunged for me. I spun and brought my knife up but with Carol's weight I was too slow.

A shot rang out and the geek dropped. I looked back at the woman named Amelia and saw the smoke rising from the Beretta she clung to with both hands. She had save my life, both our lives, I realized as I hugged Carol's unconscious body tighter against me.

Two more geeks lunged for Amelia and Daniel. I threw my Ka-bar and it stuck the geek at Amelia's back in the eye with a sickening thud.

A rifle blast sounded and the geek about to end Daniel dropped. I looked up and saw Andrea standing on the roof of the F-100 with the scope of Dale's Remington 700 to her eye.

We'd all saved each others lives so now I guess we'd have to trust each other. Trust, there was that word again. Seemed I was having to rely on it more and more often lately.

"Run!" I shouted and made a break for the Ford F-100.

Amelia and Daniel must have come to the same conclusion about trust because I could heard their foot steps pounding the pavement behind me.

I heard gun fire at my six and hoped Amelia was aiming for the geeks behind us and not at me.

Andrea cleared the path ahead with her Remington. Woman was good. Never wasted a single round. With ever retort of her rifle, I saw a geek drop. When we finally reached the truck Andrea slung herself into the drivers seat. I dropped Carol unceremoniously into the bed of the trunk. Hurled myself over the edge and then turned so I could offer my hand to Amelia. Daniel helped himself to the passenger seat and Andrea slammed that gas pedal through the floor.

As we sped away from certain death Amelia and I found ourselves staring at each other.

"I think you dropped this," she said with a smile.

Suddenly she tossed me something that caught the glint of the sinking sun midair. I snacked from the air and pulled my hand down to see that I had caught my Ka-bar by the handle.

I looked up surprised, she must have plucked it from the eye of the geek I had saved her from. I was happy to have it back. Happy to have escaped with my life and Carol's.

I felt my chest rumble and laughter burst out of me. Unfamiliar and slightly manic I couldn't contain it. Amelia looked at me and then her sideways grin grew into her own delirious laughter. Soon I heard Andrea and Daniel's laughter join ours. Me must have been quite the sight. Half dead, covered in gore, racing the sun back the farm and laughing our damn heads off. Bunch of lunatic fools but at least we were fools with a pulse.


	19. Chapter 19 - Carol

B, Yazzy x, Mamasan, RhiannonMuir, Ivy, jlcummins, HaloHunter89, DevilWithAnAngelHeart, hillaryn, HermioneandMarcus, Jasmin Jade xx, DarkAngelShadow, and itsi3 - thanks for the love.

Ivy- Thanks so much, I can't tell you how flattered I am. I would defiantly encourage you to go for it. I've been reading and writing fan fiction since 2004 and this is the first story I've ever felt like I wanted to share. I gotta tell you, it's been so fun. Working on the story and hearing everyone's responses is always the highlight of my day.

Folks, I am so sorry for bein' gone for so long. I have had a very hectic month. Thanks for hanging in there.

Disclaimer - I own nothing, except the original plot lines, dialog, characters and stuff...

**Chapter 19 - Carol**

I came-to in the bed of a truck. I was lying on my back with my head on Daryl's lap. He was stroking my hair and talking, but not to me.

I kept my eyes closed and tried not to wince every time we hit a bump in the road. The pain would erupt where my stitches had torn open, and my ribs were cracked, and my bruises were swelling - So basically, everywhere. I focused on the conversation as an alternative to the pain.

"So, what now?" he asked.

"Why don't you tell me about the girl?" said a voice I didn't recognize. It was a woman's, husky and full of bite.

"The girl is none of your damn business," snapped Daryl.

"Listen, I saved your life, you save my life and blondie over there saved Daniel's life, so now we're in a weird limbo where we all owe each other but not enough to trust each other. I'm not asking for the location of your secret hideout or whatever, I just want to know why you chased that girl down, slugged her, and tried to carry her off like a god damn cave-man. You have a good explanation for that, great, I'd love to hear it, if not we are gonna end up right where we started, with me pointing my gun at you head."

I heard Daryl chuckle. "So what? You're just looking out for the girl's best interests? Some girl who you don't know from a hole in the wall?"

"Us girls gotta stick together," she said in a sultry voice laced with venom. "My conscience wont let me sit by while some little girl is brutalized. The end of the world has made monsters of people and I'm not talking about the roamers."

"Roamer? Is that what you call them?"

"Yes," said the woman in the flat tone. "Now answer my question."

I could feel Daryl stiffen underneath me. He was gonna be stubborn about this. He always was. Didn't feel he needed to explain himself to anyone, or, maybe he was just keeping his promise to me to keep our friendship a secret.

"Daryl, just fucking tell her," I heard Andrea's voice coming through the window to the cab. She must be the one driving.

I heard Daryl scratch his head. I felt so detached. I realized I didn't care what his answer was. I was done caring, about myself, about others, what they knew or didn't know, about everything. I was done, empty, a husk.

"Her father died earlier today, turned into a geek and attacked her and her sister. They barely escaped with their lives. Apparently, she took it real hard 'cause she just left, took off. I think she was attempting suicide by geek. I knocked her out because she was fighting me and I wouldn't leave her. So, I only saw two options, what I did, or we both died."

Was that the story he was telling people?

"Who is the girl to you?" asked the woman.

Daryl was silent. Apparently he decided she was back to asking questions that weren't none of her business.

"She's a member of our group," called out Andrea from the drivers seat. "We look out for our own.

"Sound's like a good group to be part of," said the woman thoughtfully.

"Well, you two seem like good people yourselves, sticking your necks out for a girl you don't know who seems like she's in trouble," boomed Andrea's voice through the window to the cab. "We're headed back to our people if you'd like to join us."

"What do you think Daniel?" yelled the woman.

"Y'all got food 'cause haven't eaten in days," boomed a man's voice that was somehow melodic.

I heard Andrea laughing, "yeah, we got food."

I felt Daryl tense below me again. He didn't seem happy about Andrea extending an invitation to strangers but he wasn't fighting it. He just kept quiet and stroked my hair.

When the truck turned off the road and onto a dirt path I knew we were almost home but all I cared about was the excruciating pain of every bump.

My eyes bulged open and my jaw clenched tight against the pain.

Daryl was there in my line of sight.

"Hey. Welcome back."

His words brought me right back to Hershel. Lying in that stupid bed in that stupid room while he told me how he patched me together like Frankenstien's monster, all the while Daryl was standing in the hallway listening. I knew he was there, hearing Hershel describe in excruciating detail how broken and used up I was. I had finally learned to hear him coming and I wished to god I hadn't. I would give anything not to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Daryl knew just how revolting I really was... but he did.

I felt that last tether snap and I floated away from reality. I felt my eyes glazed over and no longer saw him but stared through him.

"Carol? Carol?" his voice was a whisper, desperate and urgent.

"So this is home sweet home?" asked the woman.

"Looks so... quaint," sang Daniel's voice with a chuckle.

"Stay with Andrea, I'm sure Rick will want to talk to you when he gets back," said Daryl as he slipped his arms under my shoulders and knees to lift me up."

"Gets back?" asked Andrea. "They were only going into town."

"Jeep's not back yet," said Daryl in gruff voice.

"Here, let me take her so that you don't jostle her when you jump down," said Daniel.

I felt strong, gentle hands take me. He cradled me against him and I noticed he smelled like warmth and sweetness. I was shocked that it didn't freak me out to be touched by someone other than Daryl. Maybe I really was dead inside.

I heard Daryl jump down and felt him take me back up into familiar arms. It had been so different this morning when he carried me back to the his little camp on the outskirts of the farm. I couldn't believe this was all the same day. This morning seemed like a life time ago.

I wished he would carry me back to his camp - I was always a better version of myself with him, in the woods, away from the others - but he didn't. He carried me back into the house, back into that stupid room and placed me on that stupid bed.

"I'll be right back, I promise."

As he left he picked something up off the floor but I just stared at the wall keeping a silent vigil for my own soul.

The shadow of the window pane made a blurry cross on the wall and I watched it rise as the sun sank. When the cross was nearly to the ceiling, elongated and asymmetrical a cleaned up Daryl returned cradling Sophie against his side with his right arm and balancing a shallow bowl in his free hand.

He placed the bowl on the table next to the bed and Sophia on the bed right next to me.

She didn't acknowledge me, she just stared off into her own distance.

I didn't speak or even turn my head. It hurt too much to see her, broken, empty, beaten and betrayed. Everything I had sacrificed, all those years of never fighting back, all to save her from this fate, from that look in her eye that said she knew just how ugly this world was. You carry that ugliness with you for the rest of your days, it never goes away. Now here we were, two ugly sisters.

The resentment began to rise like bile. I blamed her. If it hadn't been for her I would have left when I was 13, fended for myself, died rather than stayed there. I would have fought every time, never given in, forced him to beat me unconscious before I stopped fighting.

I wanted to scream but I didn't. I wanted to get up and walk to the other side of the room, turn my back to her but I didn't. Dead people don't get up and walk around, at least not real ones. I was determined to get being dead right. I had failed at being a sister, a daughter and a friend. I would at least be good at being dead.

I didn't want her next to me. Her arm touching mine made my skin crawl. It was too tactile a reminder of my failure. Too real. Too warm. Too soft. Too alive.

Flashes from stables hit me like a barrage of bullets. I fought the instinct to flinch. Dead people don't flinch.

Daryl pulled up a chair next to me and I heard water dripping. His hand took mine and he lifted up my whole arm. I felt a cold wet cloth press against my bicep and slowly slide down my arm. Then more water dripping. He picked up my other hand and I felt the cold wetness press against my other bicep. He was cleaning me. I felt him wipe the grime and the gore and the dirt of the road from my arms and hand and neck and face.

It was befitting, I thought, like some sort of ritual washing of the dead. I wondered if they would bury me next to Otis and Hershel's geek family. Seemed like a lot of work. Daryl should have never come after me and dragged me back here. Folks got a right to chose their own time to go. I was already dead, that was just how I planned to dispose of my body.

He had no right. I chose to go. I did. It was my choice, not his. My body, not his. Not his. Not his.

Again the scenes from the stable replayed in my mind making my head spin like I'd just been back handed.

Fear. Shame. Anger. Resentment. Too much. Too many feelings.

Daryl lifted his hands off me and held them, frozen above me for a moment. I felt his eyes on me and then he pulled his hands away.

This is why it's good to be dead. The dead don't feel anything.

I heard Daryl clear his throat and then crack something open.

"Now where were we? Right, the little girl just saved the dumb-ass scarecrow and now she's gone to sleep and he is watching over her."

My book he was reading me this morning, he went and got it. God, could it really have just been this morning? Hard to believe this morning I was alive.

Daryl read for a long time. The pane's shadow cross faded with the sun and it was full dark when car doors slammed followed by voices outside. Daryl got up, walked to the window and looked outside.

"It's just King Shane and Skeletor. She snuck off to go find Rick like a dumb-ass and looks like she got a bit knocked up. I notice she didn't come back with the car she left in. You know when I left to go clean up she came to my camp and told me the she needed me to run into town real quick and bring Herschel and Rick back. Like it's so easy to just go off the farm, like going into town isn't a potential death sentence. Like I'm at her beck-and-fucking-call. Mind you she didn't even care about Glenn or that I'd just come back from finding you. Damn woman never gets her hands dirty, I told her if she wanted them to go get them herself. Looks like King Shane went after her and dragged her ass back.

"Seems to be a running theme around here," he said returning to his seat. "You, Herschel, Skeletor, I don't know why y'all are in such a rush to leave this here farm and lose us some cars. This place is safe, quite, plenty of food. Them cars weren't bad neither."

He was quiet before giving me a side long glance, "you know you gotta snap out of this catatonic shit 'cause if'n you don' I'ma go wacko beat someone to death."

He laughed mirthlessly, "probably Shane."

He lowed his head to scrutinize the floor.

"Don't do this," he said in a small voice. "I already lost Merle -"

He bit down on his words, to sentimental, to emotional for Daryl Dixon.

"You've earned your place... in THIS world. What you survived. Takin' out that monster -"

He was silent again for a lingering moment.

"I know I failed you, both of you, and Merle too, failed everyone that ever mattered to me but... I just want my friend back."

He looked up then and I felt his eyes on me, waiting. When I didn't move or speak he picked up my old book again.

I was surprised. I expected anger, his usual response to anything emotional. I expected him to say that we weren't his problem, that we weren't no kin to him and if I had just kept my eye on Sophie none of this would have happened.

"Right, so back to the story," drawled Daryl. "They just fell asleep in the field of poppies and the scarecrow and the tin guy were..."

I hadn't realized I'd fallen asleep 'til I woke up. Daryl was asleep in the chair next to my bed, the book he'd read me all night spread open and in a state of half falling off his knee. Sophia was curled up in a ball at my side.

I noticed the pane's cross had retuned but it was on the other wall across from the side window. Outside I heard car doors slamming and more voices than there had been last night.

Daryl was at the window before I even realized he was awake.

"I'll be right back," he said and swept out of the room.

I kept my eyes on the cross. Mesmerized by the four burningly bright squares of light that carved out the cross of shadow. They were so bright that they hurt my eyes to look at but I welcomed the pain.

I was reminded of how pathetic I felt hiding in my own shadow away from the sun. Now I was so low a creature that even just the play of light on a wall burned my eyes.

The day time was no time for the dead.

I opened my eyes and the cross had moved to the floor just under the second window. Must be about noon.

I felt a warm weight beside me. Sophia. She hadn't moved. I didn't look to see if she was awake.

There were voices again, muffled but upset. I couldn't distinguish what any of them were saying. I heard foot steps approach the front door, and myself by default. Then, one voice rose above the rest, Hershel's.

"Let's get one thing clear, this is my farm. I wanted you gone. Rick convinced me otherwise but that doesn't mean I have to like it. So, why don't you do us both a favor and keep your mouth shut?"

Oh shit, Hershel just made a chump out of somebody. I wonder who just got publicly dressed down by the old man?

I sighed.

The dead don't wonder I reminded myself.

After a little Daryl came in with some food and put it on the table next to me. I kept my eyes on the cross.

He sat down in his chair and rubbed his face with his hands.

"Sophia hasn't said a word since she came out of those stables, except to say that you were in there and later that you had taken off. You're important enough to her to claw herself out of whatever abyss she's fallen into long enough to let someone know you need help before slipping back in."

He sounded tired and he was quiet for a long time.

"I get it. You believe the whole strength in numbers thing. Ed was dead, you figured Sophia was as safe as she was ever gonna be in this world, and you would go kill yourself.

"Well, you're wrong.

"She isn't safe, not from the demons in her own head. You're the only one who can help her dig out of this hole.

"Think about that."

He stood up slowly like he was aching and tired before retreating to the door.

"Rick, Glenn and Hershel got attacked while they were in town. One of their attackers got hurt trying to get away, was abandoned by his people and Rick made the call to bring him back here."

I could see Daryl shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.

"I told you Rick was that good sort of person who could get us killed. His mercy has put us all in a pretty tough spot."

He sighed, leaning against the door frame.

"Anyway, Hershel patched him up and he's been unconscious all day. Some pretty heavy decisions gonna have to be made when he does wake up, I tell you what."

I kept my eyes on the shadow cross. I wasn't sure why he insisted on updating me. The dead don't need to stay up on the latest developments.

"Try to eat something," he said his hand patting the door frame before he slipped out. "Even the dead eat."

I felt my mouth twitch where a smile should be.

Man had a point.


	20. Chapter 20 - Daryl

Mayhem95, bspooky3, Mamasan, StephTramell89, Ivy, RhiannonMuir, mygnomefriend, Yazzy x, Jasmin Jade xx, itsi3, HaloHunter89, HermioneandMarcus - thanks for the love!

Sorry it's been so long between posts. It's been a crazy summer and I just haven't had any time. :(

Disclaimer - I own nothing but all the original stuff

Chapter 20 - Daryl

My knuckles connected yet again with Randal's face and he hit the ground hard. He was just a kid, couldn't'a been much older than Carol. I flinched just thinking about her and clenched down so hard I thought my teeth would shatter.

I reached down gabbing his collar to pull him up just to punch him back down. The nauseating sound of flesh tearing was surprisingly loud in the empty shed. I couldn't tell if it was my fist or his face this time, they were both covered in so much blood, his, mine didn't matter. I welcomed the pain. It had been a long week and I needed to hurt something as much as Rick needed answers.

Randal was still sprawled on the ground when my fist came down on him again.

He panted in pain and fear. Spitting out blood to clear his mouth he begged for it to stop. "I told you-"

"You ain't told me shit!" I barked back pulling him up from the ground and slamming him against the wall. I wasn't sure who I was saying that to, the kid I was torturing or the girl who was torturing me. It had been a whole week and Carol still hadn't said a word, she just stared at the wall like a fucking geek.

"I barely knew those guys, I met them on the road."

"How many in your group?" I asked pacing the small space.

No answer. I was getting real tired of this shit.

I pulled out my ka-bar.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Come on man!" He begged but he didn't answer.

I brought down the knife like an attack and slammed it hard, burying the tip into the wood between his legs. He didn't start answering my questions his pecker would be next.

"30. 30. 30 guys," he practically screamed.

God this guy was so pathetic, broke so easily with just a little scare tactics and a few bruises. Carol was so much stronger than this little whelp. She'd endured so much for so long and never broke - so why now? Why when she was finally free?

"Where?" Where did you go? What dark corner of your mind are you hiding in? Why did you leave me alone? ... I miss you...

Randal didn't answer my question.

I ripped the tape off his bandage and he screamed. I dug my ka-bar into the wound on his thigh and started dragging it across his leg.

"I don't know, I swear," he growled through gritted teeth, manic anger in his eyes. "We were never any place more than a night."

_Convenient._

"Scouting? Planing on staying local?"

"I - I dont know. They left me behind." He sounded like a child. Sophie was only a child, didn't stop Ed from hurting her, wouldn't stop others neither. Others, like Randal's 30 men.

"You ever pick a scab?" I asked.

"Come on man! I'm trying to cooperate," he begged in a panic.

"Start real slow at first," I threatened, "sooner or later you just gotta rip it off."

"Okay, okay," he broke. "They have weapons, heavy stuff, automatics."

I kept digging my knife in his wound.

"But I didn't do anything!" he squealed.

"Your boys shot at my boys, tried to take this farm," I growled. "You just went along for the ride? You're trying to tell me you're innocent.

"Yes!" He yelled into my face between pants.

"These - these people took me in. Not just guys, a whole group of 'em. Men and women, kids too, just like you people. Thought I'd have a better chance with them, you know? But, we go out, scavenge - just the men. One night we - we found this little camp site, a man and his two daughters, teenagers, you know? Real young. Real cute."

I turned around from where I had been pacing to see the eyes of an animal staring up at me. He was no kid. He looked away in shame, too little to late.

"Daddy had to watch while these guys they - And they didn't even kill him afterwards. They just - they just made him watch as his daughters. They just - just - just left him there."

All I could think of was Ed, how I had failed those girls. Suddenly he was there before me, Ed. All my hate for that monster, all my hate for myself flooded through my system like adrenaline.

"No but - but - but - I didn't touch those girls. No. I swear I didn't tou-"

Something inside me snapped and I kicked him hard in the stomach. He crumbled hard to the ground.

"Please! You gotta believe me! I'm not like that! I ain't like that!"

_Bullshit._

I kicked again, hard.

He screamed and I dove in, slamming my fist into his face over and over again. I felt my sanity slip away, carried away by my rage. l wasn't sure who I was beating. His face kept changing.

Randal.

Ed.

Myself.

Shane.

Rick.

Me.

Merle.

Me again.

Carol - _No!_

My fist froze in the air and I bit back a sob, I couldn't ever hurt her. No matter what. No matter what happened.

I blinked back tears and it was Randal again, unconscious and bloody, hanging limply from where I held his collar. I dropped him and his body hit the ground with a thud. I scrambled back and buried my face in my hands trying to contain my guilt and my horror, stuff it all back in deep down from where it had spilled out, laying everything bare.

When I was back in control I stood and strode out of the barn to find the others.

They were all gathered around the fire at camp for breakfast and news. We were all pretty freaking confused when Rick and King Shane came back last night with bruised faces and a Randal who they had supposedly driven 18 miles out to drop the fuck off. Then Rick came to me alone to ask a favor. He needed answers and apparently he didn't want to dirty his own hands getting them. That was fine with me, mood I was in, if it hadn't been Randal it would just'a been somebody else. Maybe Rick could see that...

They all turned to look at me as I approached. I shifted the weight of my crossbow strap on my shoulder, uncomfortable being the center of everyone's attention.

"Boy there's got a gang, 30 men. They have heavy artillery and they ain't looking to make friends. They roll through here our boys are dead and our women, they're gonna wish they were."

Rick made the call to execute Randal and then he and Dale stormed off in a heated debate about the death penalty or some shit.

My job done I headed off to the house to find Carol. I nodded my head at Amelia and Daniel as I passed them. Amelia had been uncharacteristically silent as Rick decided to execute a kid that had come into camp the same day as them.

It amazed me how quickly they had integrated themselves into the group.

I let my mind drift back to their first day when Rick had brought Randal home the first time. It was easier than thinking about the living dead girl I was heading toward.

I slunk down the steps of Hershel's porch, dropping my boots downs down hard on each step. Squinting into the light I saw those new people, Amelia and Daniel, talking to Rick and Andrea.

Their reception had been so different than Randal's They'd been treated with hospitable mistrust which they returned with gracious suspicion.

Amelia refused to give up her piece but gave her word that she wouldn't draw it unless drawn upon. She even went so far as to say we could shoot her if she broke her word but either she kept her piece or she and Daniel went on their merry way.

I chuckled, girl was a spit fire. Put Rick in a right awful predicament. Andrea had shown these strangers where we lived. If they left and were part of a larger group they could come back guns blazing.

On the other hand, they might be good and capable survivors who saved the lives of two of his people for no other reason than they looked like they needed help.

Considering what we saw at the nursing home in Atlanta and what happened in town last night, we could probably use a few more hands that knew how to handle a weapon.

_Strength in numbers._

Carol's words played through in my head. I was starting to accept that I would have to share my head with Carol and Merle. I only hoped that when Carol started talking herself, my head wouldn't feel the need to fill the silence where her opinions should be.

Either way, looked like the girl was right about the whole strength-in-numbers thing.

I strolled over to the foursome and listened in. Amelia had her arms crossed and a hard look on her face. Daniel didn't seem quite so aggressive but just as serious.

"Before we make any decisions I'd like to speak with the girl, Carol," said Amelia in a defiant tone.

"Well, like I said, Herschel don't like guns and he wont allow you in his home with a fire arm," said Rick in a tired tone.

He'd had a long night and this conversation sounded like it was going in circles.

"You're awfully suspicious, sounds to me like you've had a few run-ins with some bad men, maybe before the world ended, maybe after. So have we," I said. "Nobody can make it on their own anymore. Believe you me, I get the benefits of just keeping it to one or two people you trust, you're more mobile, nimble, stealthy, less mouths to feed, but, even if you could fly under the radar, avoid geeks and keep yourself fed, eventually you will run into other people. What happens if those people are bad men?"

Amelia never took her eyes off me. She seemed to be trying to read me, size me up, but she was also listening. I could practically see the wheels spinning behind her eyes.

She and Daniel exchanged a look and some silent communication passed between them.

Andrea seemed to be on the same page I was because when Amelia and Daniel looked like they were considering the idea that staying might be better for them than going, she piped up.

"Listen, I get that we're in this weird limbo, we've saved each other's lives but the world has changed and trust comes at a very steep price. So, lets just agree to stay in limbo a little longer. We can get a read on you and you can see what we're like, who we are, how our group operates. At least stay until Carol is back on her feet and you can talk to her?"

Amelia eyed all of us and then locked eyes with Daniel. Whatever they said to one another I had no idea but Amelia huffed and said, "Lets get two things straight, we are free to go at any point if we decide you are not the kind of people we wanna hook up with AND the end of the world is not an excuse to disregard the last 100 years in strides made toward women's equal rights. Don't expect anything of me that you wouldn't expect of him," she said pointing her finger at me. "I've got no problem sharing the burden of any chores but if you expect me to accept chore division based on gender over preference or skill then you've got another thing comin.'"

Andrea laughed, "I like her!"

"Yeah well add race to Amelia's tirade about division of labor and you know how I feel," said Daniel, crossing his arms. "I am nobody's negro."

"Alright, well, glad we have that covered, Andrea I trust you will help our guests get settled, if you will excuse me, I need to have a word with my wife and get some shut eye. It's been a long night."

I watched Rick's back as he retreated.

"Well," said Andrea, "Daniel we can see if T-Dog's cool with you crashing in his tent and Amelia you can crash in..."

"No," said Amelia, "we stay together."

Andrea gave Amelia a startled look.

I felt an almost smirk on my lips. Now I was starting to like this girl.

"What Amelia means is, thank you for your kind offer but while we're still in limbo, Amelia and I would feel more comfortable staying together."

I saw Andrea's eye brows pulling up toward her hairline, she had no idea where to put these people. Seemed like this was more a job for Skeletor, she loved acting like queen-bee. I wondered for a moment if Rick knew how over baring and judgmental his wife was, and how much shit Andrea will catch if Skeletor decides she fucked this up.

I watched Andrea flounder for a second more.

_Fuck it, I owe the woman._

"They can stay in my tent," I heard myself say.

Andrea looked at me not even trying to hide the surprised look on her face.

"Where will you stay?" she asked, but I was already walking away toward my camp to pack up my stuff.

"I'll go grab it," I hollered over my shoulder.

When I got back to the house I heard screams coming from Carol's room and rushed to the door. Sophia had tears streaming down her face, she must have just woken up from a night mare. Carol was holding her close, rocking forward and back, forward and back.

I watched Carol stroke her sister's hair and shush her crying, whispering comforts and it's-all-rights in her ear.

I slipped away and back out the front door. They needed each other and for the first time they were helping each other. Sophia forcing Carol back to life and Carol holding Sophia's hand whenever the nightmare of their life overwhelmed. I didn't want anything to break what ever spell it was that had woken them up and lord knows I would only be in the way.

I sat down on the stairs and watched in amusement as Amelia and Daniel tried to put up my tent.

Amelia was by-no-means an expert, and I don't think Daniel had ever seen a tent before but she had a meticulously determined approach and eventually they figured it out.

A little after they finished Maggie sat down next to me with two plates.

Will you bring Carol and Sophia their food? You seem to be the only person who can get them to eat," she said softly, a tired expression on her face. Girl was going through her own trial with her sister trying to opt out and all.

"Do I look like a fucking waiter to you," snapped, snatching the plates out of her hands and stomping up the stairs, a hint of a smirk on my face.

A week had passed without much change, I thought as I stomped up those self same stairs. Sophia would get out of bed and spend time with Carl but she would just sit there next to him, silent, staring off into space. She would only eat if her sister did and they would only speak to each other and only that if Sophia woke from a nightmare and they were both in that place between being waking and sleep.

I slipped into Carol's room. She was sitting up and staring off at the wall. I hated that fucking wall. I wished I could take a sledge hammer to it, give her something to look at if nothing else. Instead I just sighed and I shut the door behind me. Walking over to my chair I collapsed into it. Leaning forward, resting my elbows on my knees I examined my shredded knuckles.

"I just beat a man half to death. At least, I think he's not dead..."

The silence was suffocating. I couldn't bare to look at her expressionless face so I kept my eyes down, focused on my knuckles.

"I guess you can't really call him a man..."

I thought of his story about the girls. Even if he was telling the truth and he hadn't touched those girls he just stood there and let it happen right in front of him. No you could never call someone like that a man.

I felt the shackles on my own guilt pulling me down. I felt myself sinking, shifting, settling into the dark places where bottom feeders dwell.

"He was tied up, defenseless, but he had answers we needed and he wouldn't give'em up without ... persuasion. So I tortured 'im 'til he broke. It was the right thing ta do, it was for the good of the group but-"

I shook my head and fought back a grimace.

"He told me something, something I wont repeat, something bad his group had done and I just snapped Carol. I started pounding his face in but it wasn't his face no more.

"I was so angry and I saw all the fucking people I hated or blamed for the bad shit that's gone down.

"I saw your daddy, Rick, Shane, even Merle, but no one as much as myself. I fucking hate myself more than anyone, more than your daddy, more than mine.

"I thought I was doing right by you, respecting your wishes, letting you handle you own shit your own way, but I was wrong and I'm sorry I let you down.

"I should have killed that som'a'bitch when I had the chance, now you got the burden of killing your own Pa and Sophie ... After all those years of you sacrificing yourself to protect that little girl, she gets attacked by her father and then has to watch her father and sister fight to the death ... and it's all my fault because I wasn't man."

Squeezing my eyes shut I buried my hands in my hair and strangled the greasy strands in my aching fists.

"I saw the faces of all the people I hate, none more than myself, and with each new face I just hit harder and harder I was insane, a mad dog, but then I saw your face I just stopped. Seems that even when I'm hallucinating in some sort of psychotic episode I still couldn't even lay hands on you in anger."

I shook my head back and forth as if I could deny the truth.

"I hate myself for what's been done to you, what I let happen."

I felt a feather light weight on my shoulders more like a breath of air than a human touch but I snapped my neck up to see her, standing, STANDING! Right there in front of me her hands hovering over my shoulder.

Her face was contorted in the sobs that she was fighting back. Relief crashed down on me, it was the first time in a week her face had shown any emotion. She might have been in pain but she was alive, really alive.

"I killed him Daryl, I stabbed him with the little knife you gave me and I felt him him die. He was on me and I felt him die and his blood was all over me, coating me, coating my hand. It so sticky and thick and hot and the smell, oh god Daryl the smell. OH GOD! Oh God! Oh god."

Her voice trailed off in a whisper and then she was just standing over me as her entire body was wracked in silent sobs.

I was a little paniced unsure what the right move was so I started to lift myself, my arms going around her middle but the second my hand grazed her side, her reaction was immediate, a blur of motion driven by animal instinct.

Suddenly she was wrapped around me and we were falling together. We each fell on our side but I don't even know if she noticed. There we were, on the floor, her legs wrapped around my waist, her arms around my neck like a little koala bear but the sobs coming from were she had buried her face buried in the crook of my neck were entirely human and I couldn't be more grateful.

She was hurting and in need of mending in more ways than one, but my friend was back. So there I was, the emotional retard, stoking her back and telling her "I'm here. I'm here. I got you." Over and over as I waited for her to ride out the flood that had broken through her catatonic facade.

She had come back to me and I would never let her slip away again.


End file.
